New Player Confusion and Frustration

[BeastNHisHarlot.4865]

I began playing a few days ago as a necromancer and really enjoyed myself. I decided to drop the $50 to upgrade to the full thing to get all the content and the level 80 boost was a nice bonus. Used the boost on a warrior since what I looked up said that they are some of the more tanky classes and are used in a lot of endgame content.

I used the boost and started to play around. I went to the Path of Fire expansion with my newly acquired gear and am getting smashed. Battles are taking forever and I have no survivability. I assume that I am unable to do this content without the appropriate gear, so I try to queue for a fractal as I expected them to be a group activity. Nope. I got placed in the tier 1 fractal by myself and promptly received my own ass again.

I am confused and frustrated. I feel as though I cannot do any content because it is all too hard. I have searched for better gear with the measly 3 gold I have to my name, but everything that I can afford looks much worse than what I have equipped. I have played around with my skills a bit but nothing seems to make a big difference. I like what I hear about endgame (horizontal progression, no pressure to be ultra elite), but I'm starting to wonder if I will even get to there.

Does anyone have any tips for progression paths or something else that I can do to be capable to do even level 80 story content?

Thank you to all who reply with anything other than something about how I suck. I'm well aware. This is my first MMO. Be gentle.

[Taril.8619]

If you're using boosted characters, you'll most likely be wearing Soldier stat gear (Power, Toughness, Vitality) and well... It sucks.

Like, really, really sucks. It's only use is to stop new players from getting totally smashed when fighting anything but they'll end up hitting like a wet noodle.

As far as obtaining gear goes, one of the easier places to obtain gear is the Heart of Thorns map, Verdant Brink. Doing events in that map will reward you with Crowbars, which you can use to open up Airship Cargo scattered around the map for Airship Parts. You can trade Airship Parts for boxes of Exotic armour with selectable stats at the Itzel vendor (Most easily found right at the place you first enter the zone at).

For picking stats, most people use Berserker (Power, Precision, Ferocity) but Maurader is a good alternative (Power, Precision, Vitality, Ferocity) for a bit more health. If you want to be super safe, you can try and do a condition based build with Trailblazer (Condition Damage, Expertise, Toughness, Vitality) with the most popular stats being Viper (Power, Precision, Condition Damage, Expertise) and Grieving (Power, Precision, Condition Damage, Ferocity) for dealing damage.

Generally how combat works in the tougher areas of Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire for people who are running full glass cannon Berserker builds with little to no defence, is to target the most dangerous enemies first. This will often be some sniper standing at the back shooting at you for like a bajillion damage. If you can see where the main sources of damage are and neutralize them, it becomes easy to breeze through the content with full damage builds.

[BeastNHisHarlot.4865]

Thank you. I'll head to Verdant Brink and try my luck at gear there.

Ive looked into it and yeah, this gear is really terrible from what everyone says. Shame.

[Cyninja.2954]

@"BeastNHisHarlot.4865"My suggestion:Bench the boosted level 80 and continue playing the necromancer. Necromancer is one of the, if not the, most forgiving classes in open world PvE. Get that character to 80, finish the core story, get some basic understanding of the game.

You could finish the first story mission of PoF with your warrior, it will be rather difficult for an inexperienced player so expect to die often, to get the raptor mount unlocked.

That said, what you need is some basic guide videos on gear, dodging, proper builds, etc. You can check youtube for those as well as experiment while playing a character up.

That's exactly the reason boosting is often not recommended for new players (and those boosts still have no warning disclaimer). Boosting strait to 80 and going into HoT or PoF will be very punishing. It's even punishing for not boosted players that never bother with learning or understanding their class.

Otherwise, here are some useful builds for general open world content:http://metabattle.com/wiki/Open_World

Make sure to read through the explanations. Don't worry to much about the ascended gear, just check the general stats used and try to get blue/green/yellow or exotic gear similar to those.

Finally, you can check Woodenpotatoes guide videos on open world builds, he goes into a lot of detail and explains all traits and skills (unfortunately only power builds):

(warrior)

(necromancer)

or

Lord Hizen (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpuUtDBPZYklA6hVyxqxNuQ) who has a couple of trailblazer (condition damage gear with a lot of survival) builds for open world content (you can use Dire or Rabid gear as cheaper substitutes).

[BeastNHisHarlot.4865]

Thanks for the resources. I was contemplating going back to the necromancer and progressing for a while with him. I think I may do just that since this suggestion is almost exactly what I was thinking.

[TamX.1870]

@"BeastNHisHarlot.4865" said:I began playing a few days ago as a necromancer and really enjoyed myself. I decided to drop the $50 to upgrade to the full thing to get all the content and the level 80 boost was a nice bonus. Used the boost on a warrior since what I looked up said that they are some of the more tanky classes and are used in a lot of endgame content.

Yes, you will eventually love your warrior, but at first, it can be frustrating for new players. Trust me - I once deleted a warrior as I just couldn't get anything done without dying, but eventually I made a new one, and being more experienced I have loved it.

As said above, necromancer is far more forgiving class for newcomers. You will fell in love in to your necromancer and it will serve you far. It starts to fall behind only when you start to reach high end content, but that will probably take some time.

Take your time to learn the fight mechanics, builds and gears. Metabattle (https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki) builds for open world may be too difficult for newcomers, in what case take a look to possible WvW roaming builds and PvP bunker builds, try them out and tailor them to suit to PvE side (usually PvP/WvW side builds have extensive mobility and condi cleanse, which is overkill for most PvE content). PvP/WvW builds are tailored for situations where you don't know what you are going to face, which is the case for newcomers in PvE side.

PoF is easier than HoT, HoT is known to burst out tears of frustration from newcomers - although eventually you start to love the maps when you gain more experience.

For Warrior, I could suggest close full berserker gears. Warrior already has quite good HP pool and armor, defensive pieces are generally not helping much. If you want, mix in few soldiers, but don't go much over 20k HP / 2500 armor. Take Axe/Axe and Mace/Shield (or mace/mace) weapon combo. For traits: Strength 1-2-2, Discipline 2-1-1, Defense 1-1-1. This will give you both Might heal and Adrenaline heal. In Strength, you can also trait 2-2-2, so your heal skill gives you Might, which heals you a bit.

I used the boost and started to play around. I went to the Path of Fire expansion with my newly acquired gear and am getting smashed. Battles are taking forever and I have no survivability. I assume that I am unable to do this content without the appropriate gear, so I try to queue for a fractal as I expected them to be a group activity. Nope. I got placed in the tier 1 fractal by myself and promptly received my own kitten again.

Either take your necro up to 80, get hero points and unlock specs, or play warrior more and even more. Remember correct builds for different situations. You can't assume raid builds are perfect for Open World roaming, as they are heavily tailored for specific content. Check Metabattle Open World section, and take a look to Conquest and Small Scale WvW builds.

I am confused and frustrated. I feel as though I cannot do any content because it is all too hard.

You can take steps back. You can go back to Core Tyria maps you left, get hero points and get fights. Try Orr, Silverwastes and Dry Top, and PoF of course - those have bit more potent mobs than lower level maps.

Does anyone have any tips for progression paths or something else that I can do to be capable to do even level 80 story content?

Thank you to all who reply with anything other than something about how I suck. I'm well aware. This is my first MMO. Be gentle.

My best advice would be to take a step back to core tyria maps. It will help a lot when you have more experience. GW2 gives challenges for new players even in its Open World PvE side, unlike some other MMOs. In HoT and PoF maps it is very important to know your "enemy", that is, what the mobs do. You will get down very fast if you are not prepared for mobs' special abilities.

[Cuks.8241]

You jumped straight into end content. Of course it is tougher, it is meant for players that have learned at least the basics. Get through the base game first and learn a bit.

[Danikat.8537]

One thing I haven't seen addressed yet is what happened when you went into Fractals. This game does not have automated grouping, when you enter a dungeon, raid or Fractals you'll go in with whoever is in your party at the time (or if someone in your party is already inside you'll get a prompt to join them). If you're alone then you'll be alone inside too.

Instead you need to use the Looking For Group Tool, which is part of the contacts menu, to find people to play with. This is also not automated, you don't simply join a queue and get dumped into the first group with space. Instead anyone who is looking to do that content can create a group listing with a free text box to give a description of the group. That's usually a mix of what exactly they're doing (like which Fractal or dungeon path they're going for) and who they'd like to join - which might be anything from "everyone welcome" to specifying a profession and build, or requiring proof that you've done it before. (If they don't specify then it's reasonable to assume they're open to anyone joining.)

If you see a group which looks right for you then you just need to push the button to join and you'll be added to the group. If you don't see one you can put up your own advert and wait for people to join you. Once you've got enough people someone will need to go through the entrance and then everyone else who is in the map where the entrance is (for Fractals this is Lion's Arch) will receive a prompt in the middle of the screen to join them. If you're not in the right map you'll need to go there first, then you get the prompt to join the group inside.

[Dayra.7405]

Fractals are indeed group-content, but group building for Fractals isn't automatic, it is supported with the LFG-tool (key: z, 2nd tab).

There is also an quite reliable working way to do the first PoF-Mission you failed alone: Use the LFG-Tool in Lion-arch and make a Party-Search with Text:"Please, Newbie needs support getting Raptor".

As GW2 is an MMO and people in GW2 are quite helpful if asked, you probably don't need to wait long till someone helps you.

GW2 also has a nice mechanic, that allow LVL80 to play any core tyria map from lvl 1 till 80. So don't worry to go with your lvl 80 into an lvl 1 area.I would recommend you: use you necro and level it or your warrior to get the pact-mastery https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pact_Commander_Mastery with mentor-tag till autoloot.

[AliamRationem.5172]

Hi! Welcome to GW2!

This being your first MMO, you've probably noticed there's a bit of a learning curve to these games. Jumping to 80 is not recommended for new players as it tends to result in a frustrating experience.

I recommend you level your necromancer. It's about the most straightforward class you can play and has excellent passive defenses. This makes it easy to pick up and learn while you're busy learning everything else the game throws at you as a new player. When you reach 80, you might give the Reaper elite spec a try. It deals great damage and can chew through those expansion enemies in no time with the right build!

[Randulf.7614]

@BeastNHisHarlot.4865 said:Thank you. I'll head to Verdant Brink and try my luck at gear there.

Ive looked into it and yeah, this gear is really terrible from what everyone says. Shame.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Soldiers is by no means terrible. I've used it on my Warrior pretty much since 2012/2013. Now I agree it doesn't have the dps, esp vs later content mobs, but I have otherwise found it has worked perfectly for me. It allows me to be virtually unkillable in open world alongside my blocks, parries and high cc and means I can help keep team mates on their feet in fights. I wouldn't take it to instances, but I am very, very happy with soldiers in open world

Soldiers just prob isn't right for your playstyle or build though.

Going to HoT may be worse since it is argued HoT is much harder than PoF in terms of surviving. Using a boost as a new player is likely the issue because you haven't adjusted to the learning curve - a curve which is very steep between core and the expansions. You are better off learning your class first before going to endgame areas like HoT and PoF. You are basically going to the high end open world, without knowing the game

One of the most important aspects is to learn the art of dodging. Much of your survivability comes from mitigating damage from dodge timing and condition clearing. Once you have a reasonable stat build that works for you (it's not important to be too analytical in the open world with stat builds), your weapon and utility skills build will be the most vital thing to work on.

[Teratus.2859]

It appears from your comment OP that you have made a typical new player mistake.

You started with a Necromancer (didn't specify what level you got it too) and then jumped to a level 80 boosted warrior and went straight into Path of Fire..I strongly do not recommend that people do this when they are new to the game.

You've skipped over the entire leveling experience that will have helped you get familiarised with the Warrior class..Thankfully though all you really need to do is go back to the start with your warrior and play through the core game content and experiment, you can do this with your 80 warrior easily enough so it's not too big a problem.

The expansions and living world content was designed for people who already have a good deal of experience with Gw2 and the classes they play, this is largely why you're getting smashed there..

You can skip over all that learning and just adopt someone else's "meta" build etc but this again is something I would strongly not recommend either as it could deprive you of learning various other elements of your class and cause you problems down the road if you find your build doesn't work for you in certain content and you don't really understand how the build system and your class works.

It's very easy to get stuck in your ways when playing a build you got off some website and never learning how to build your own builds because of it.Heart of Thorns is notorious for destroying players who have done exactly that which is why so many often complain about it's difficulty which is much higher than the core game's admittedly but isn't all that challenging for experienced players playing classes they know very well.

Ultimately don't feel the need to rush into newer and harder content, take your time to get familiar with the classes you want to play and experiment with the build system.. learn which traits and stats work well together and try different things.

@Randulf.7614 said:I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Soldiers is by no means terrible. I've used it on my Warrior pretty much since 2012/2013. Now I agree it doesn't have the dps, esp vs later content mobs, but I have otherwise found it has worked perfectly for me. It allows me to be virtually unkillable in open world alongside my blocks, parries and high cc and means I can help keep team mates on their feet in fights. I wouldn't take it to instances, but I am very, very happy with soldiers in open world

Soldiers just prob isn't right for your playstyle or build though.

I'm 100% in agreement with Randulf here, I've been using Solder Stats on a Necromancer build since before Gw2 had expansions and it can be extremely good in PvE content, make you practically unkillable and perfect for soloing the games toughest PvE content and many of it's strongest bosses.

People like to hate on Soldier stats more than it deserves imo, it's by no means going to be top tier DPS or anything but it does have it's uses and I would argue that for some classes it's one of the best all rounder stat sets you can have providing you know how to build a good/reliable build around the set.

I have personally soloed a lot of Gw2 content with Soldier Stats gear, even dungeons and fractals content which is designed for 5 man groups, as well as group based content in the open world like legendary bounties in PoF and even world bosses before they got 15 minute timers on them.

[KrHome.1920]

Soldier can work fine for a beginner. Selecting the right traits to get some damage multipliers and offensive boons (might, fury, quickness) is still better than switching to berserker gear and get oneshot by half of the expac mobs as a new player.

If you have only soldier gear (the gear from the level 80 boost), then for the PvE content it is a no-brainer to go full offensive traitlines (for warrior: strength, arms, discipline) and pick double axes as one of the two weaponsets. That should lead to somewhat around 10 to 15k dps, which is good enough to learn the game. Lots of players won't even reach these numbers with full zerk gear, because they run trash builds without synergies or die 247 as they are not good enough at the game to be able to handle full zerk gear.

[AliamRationem.5172]

I agree with the others that soldier will make you pretty hard to kill and give you all the cushion you need to walk away from fights that are going downhill. However, I think it really lacks damage and will make for a frustrating experience. Many enemies are designed to punish low DPS builds or at least reward high damage (e.g. veteran hydras that stun with every move they make but may be chain stunned to death themselves if you can deal enough damage to knock 33% off their health bar within a few seconds!). But learning how to survive and properly utilize such a build when you're brand new and just jumped into expansion content might be expecting a bit much!

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

The big problem is you used the boost instead of learning the game. Almost all veteran players discourage this; because you chose to go from being a new player to being an end-game player in an instant, then get upset about the difficulty.

This may seem harsh, but you should think better about your decisions. This is an easy way to be put off by games.

I'm pretty sure introducing that boost hurt player retention more than it ever helped.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Hannelore.8153 said:The big problem is you used the boost instead of learning the game. Almost all veteran players discourage this; because you chose to go from being a new player to being an end-game player in an instant, then get upset about the difficulty.

This may seem harsh, but you should think better about your decisions. This is an easy way to be put off by games.

I'm pretty sure introducing that boost hurt player retention more than it ever helped.

I don't know if I'd blame the player on this one. The boost is offered and perhaps it shouldn't be for first timers. But it is good to share the perspective on why this might not be a great idea.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Unfortunately gw2 is not very beginner friendly despite being catered to casual players. In order to figure out how to acquire the right gear, get exotic/ascended stats, make half decent builds, get involved in end game content etc. you pretty much have to figure it out from outside sources. It doesnt help that there is a huge difficulty gap between the core game (levels 1-80), and the expansions.

Your best options are probably to look up open-world builds, and focus entirely on making a decent build for your preferred class. You will learn how to be effective in combat with practice, but as a new player your build/class can make or break your experience of the game.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@BeastNHisHarlot.4865 said:I began playing a few days ago as a necromancer and really enjoyed myself. I decided to drop the $50 to upgrade to the full thing to get all the content and the level 80 boost was a nice bonus. Used the boost on a warrior since what I looked up said that they are some of the more tanky classes and are used in a lot of endgame content.

I used the boost and started to play around. I went to the Path of Fire expansion with my newly acquired gear and am getting smashed. Battles are taking forever and I have no survivability. I assume that I am unable to do this content without the appropriate gear, so I try to queue for a fractal as I expected them to be a group activity. Nope. I got placed in the tier 1 fractal by myself and promptly received my own kitten again.

I am confused and frustrated. I feel as though I cannot do any content because it is all too hard. I have searched for better gear with the measly 3 gold I have to my name, but everything that I can afford looks much worse than what I have equipped. I have played around with my skills a bit but nothing seems to make a big difference. I like what I hear about endgame (horizontal progression, no pressure to be ultra elite), but I'm starting to wonder if I will even get to there.

Does anyone have any tips for progression paths or something else that I can do to be capable to do even level 80 story content?

Thank you to all who reply with anything other than something about how I suck. I'm well aware. This is my first MMO. Be gentle.

Are you EU or NA? If you're NA just shoot me a PM here and Ill happily run through the content with you and show you some stuff. I am always happy to show new players around~

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@BeastNHisHarlot.4865 said:I began playing a few days ago as a necromancer and really enjoyed myself. I decided to drop the $50 to upgrade to the full thing to get all the content and the level 80 boost was a nice bonus. Used the boost on a warrior since what I looked up said that they are some of the more tanky classes and are used in a lot of endgame content.

I used the boost and started to play around. I went to the Path of Fire expansion with my newly acquired gear and am getting smashed. Battles are taking forever and I have no survivability. I assume that I am unable to do this content without the appropriate gear, so I try to queue for a fractal as I expected them to be a group activity. Nope. I got placed in the tier 1 fractal by myself and promptly received my own kitten again.

I am confused and frustrated. I feel as though I cannot do any content because it is all too hard. I have searched for better gear with the measly 3 gold I have to my name, but everything that I can afford looks much worse than what I have equipped. I have played around with my skills a bit but nothing seems to make a big difference. I like what I hear about endgame (horizontal progression, no pressure to be ultra elite), but I'm starting to wonder if I will even get to there.

Does anyone have any tips for progression paths or something else that I can do to be capable to do even level 80 story content?

Thank you to all who reply with anything other than something about how I suck. I'm well aware. This is my first MMO. Be gentle.

Are you EU or NA? If you're NA just shoot me a PM here and Ill happily run through the content with you and show you some stuff. I am always happy to show new players around~

Same here. If you need a hand unlocking an elite spec (the HoT hero points spawn tough champions and can be difficult to find!), I'm happy to help with that. Also on NA servers.

[TamX.1870]

@Randulf.7614 said:I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Soldiers is by no means terrible. I've used it on my Warrior pretty much since 2012/2013. Now I agree it doesn't have the dps, esp vs later content mobs, but I have otherwise found it has worked perfectly for me. It allows me to be virtually unkillable in open world alongside my blocks, parries and high cc and means I can help keep team mates on their feet in fights. I wouldn't take it to instances, but I am very, very happy with soldiers in open world

I understand what you say, but I think that extensive use of Soldier pieces make you just a punching bag. It just delays the inevitable a bit. And still, I definitely use more defensive gears, for example Marauder, Minstrel, Trailblazer and such depending on class and what I am playing. On Warrior, I trust more to offensive power, and traits that work when you play offensively (e.g. Might heal, as Might generates on strikes, Mending as healing skill etc) and try to trait and gear up so that I am hard to put stay still (as being able not to strike can bring certain death. At the same time I admit that it is not as easy to do at the beginning, and that is why I found Warrior much later in the game.

On classes like Elementalist I really understand Soldier pieces. Elementalist is low-HP, low-armor class. In Berserker pieces, Elementalist has like half of the HP of the Warrior and Necro, and you need to slot quite a bunch of Toughness pieces to take the armor at the same level on Necro or Elementalist what it is on Warrior just in zerker gears. That said, IMO Warrior is passively pretty resilent against both power and condition damage just as it is, and extensive use of Toughness and Vitality (instead of offensive stats) in gears will not make as big impact as you might think.

This concerns of course mainly power damage and Open World PvE. Condition damage builds - for example Necromancer and Mesmer - can benefit a lot from gears like Dire and Trailblazer, which makes them tanky as hell. Also, support classes in WvW/PvP groups can really benefit on stats like Minstrels, as they are generally primary targets and their damage output in groups is meaningless.

But all that said, I really agree with you to certain point, and I advice new players to slot some Soldier pieces to builds to make them more comfortable, but going far above 20k HP and 2500 armor is probably just overkill (for OW PvE). It either makes you a punching bag for mobs if you are inexperienced, or it prolongs the fight unnecessarily if you are experienced.

EDIT: Ah, forgot to say - there is one good reason why Necro or Ranger suit so well to new players: they have minions. They will take some aggro and give you breathing room, and you can watch from bit distance what is happening around, and thus they give excellent opportunity to learn things. Both classes surely have quite good sustain on their own, too.

Going to HoT may be worse since it is argued HoT is much harder than PoF in terms of surviving. Using a boost as a new player is likely the issue because you haven't adjusted to the learning curve - a curve which is very steep between core and the expansions. You are better off learning your class first before going to endgame areas like HoT and PoF. You are basically going to the high end open world, without knowing the game

Here I agree with you 100%

One of the most important aspects is to learn the art of dodging. Much of your survivability comes from mitigating damage from dodge timing and condition clearing. Once you have a reasonable stat build that works for you (it's not important to be too analytical in the open world with stat builds), your weapon and utility skills build will be the most vital thing to work on.

Yes. GW2 is a game, where the combat revolves around actively avoiding damage instead of mitigating it. Learning to avoid the damage, learning what are the big skills and lethal attacks from mobs and how they are countered (e.g. interrupting) plays a big role.

[Cuks.8241]

Also whatever people say about gear and build, at your stage, it is not gear that is holding you back, it is game knowledge and mechanics. So movement, dodging and knowing your characters arsenal. And you get that by playing.

[TamX.1870]

@Cuks.8241 said:Also whatever people say about gear and build, at your stage, it is not gear that is holding you back, it is game knowledge and mechanics. So movement, dodging and knowing your characters arsenal. And you get that by playing.

That is probably very true, BUT many PoF enemies require also decent gears and decent builds to be handled alone. Core Tyria not that much (but it helps(*)), Orr bit more, HoT - definitely, PoF - unnecessarily hard if your gears and build do not match to your class and its strenghts.

EDIT: (*) Try low level warrior, and switch sword to axe, and trait axe, and you see how much easier it is.

[Infusion.7149]

Skimmed the thread, but if you boosted to 80 get yourself Berserker gear , assassin's gear (not a full set), or some pieces of marauder gear. Please don't run soldier's gear in fractals, it has the 5% base crit chance and zero ferocity which means your criticals hit for 150% instead of the typical 2x or more,

If you really struggle, then run marauder and maybe a few cavalier trinkets, but at least try to have 45+% crit rate without the use of fury/party help.

The only time full toughness makes sense is if you're a tank/healer (minstrel) or running full trailblazer condi builds where the enemy does high amounts of nonlethal damage.

[Innokatsu.2937]

I bought the expansions literally a week ago so I'm in a similar situation. The only difference is that I manually leveled to 80. Unfortunately the LFG is quite dead for certain aspects of the game but for an 8 year old game it's pretty normal. I advise you to join an active guild and ask for help when you feel stuck. When the game releases on Steam in Nov, hopefully the game will have an influx of players to make LFG viable again. Also make sure to check out metabattle or snowcrow for builds.

For the gear & money aspect, I just bought some gems and sold them for gold to gear myself. I know I can farm them but with a full time job, I'd rather use the hours to play the content I enjoy and not grind my butt off.

I'm pretty much struggling to progress through HoT myself, mobs hit hard and there aren't many people doing events :/

edit: Thankfully I did listen to other people about not boosting to level 80 for your first char. You learn the game a lot better that way it definitely helps me in terms of survivability. I learned that GW2 mobs aren't like most other MMOs where you can easily facetank them and be okay (lower levels are fine, but definitely not expansion mobs). You actually need to plan ahead and actively dodge to mitigate damage. There is no potion and there is one healing skill, aaand thats it lol.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Teratus.2859" said:It appears from your comment OP that you have made a typical new player mistake.

You started with a Necromancer (didn't specify what level you got it too) and then jumped to a level 80 boosted warrior and went straight into Path of Fire..I strongly do not recommend that people do this when they are new to the game.

You've skipped over the entire leveling experience that will have helped you get familiarised with the Warrior class..Thankfully though all you really need to do is go back to the start with your warrior and play through the core game content and experiment, you can do this with your 80 warrior easily enough so it's not too big a problem.

The expansions and living world content was designed for people who already have a good deal of experience with Gw2 and the classes they play, this is largely why you're getting smashed there..

You can skip over all that learning and just adopt someone else's "meta" build etc but this again is something I would strongly not recommend either as it could deprive you of learning various other elements of your class and cause you problems down the road if you find your build doesn't work for you in certain content and you don't really understand how the build system and your class works.

It's very easy to get stuck in your ways when playing a build you got off some website and never learning how to build your own builds because of it.Heart of Thorns is notorious for destroying players who have done exactly that which is why so many often complain about it's difficulty which is much higher than the core game's admittedly but isn't all that challenging for experienced players playing classes they know very well.

Ultimately don't feel the need to rush into newer and harder content, take your time to get familiar with the classes you want to play and experiment with the build system.. learn which traits and stats work well together and try different things.

@Randulf.7614 said:I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Soldiers is by no means terrible. I've used it on my Warrior pretty much since 2012/2013. Now I agree it doesn't have the dps, esp vs later content mobs, but I have otherwise found it has worked perfectly for me. It allows me to be virtually unkillable in open world alongside my blocks, parries and high cc and means I can help keep team mates on their feet in fights. I wouldn't take it to instances, but I am very, very happy with soldiers in open world

Soldiers just prob isn't right for your playstyle or build though.

I'm 100% in agreement with Randulf here, I've been using Solder Stats on a Necromancer build since before Gw2 had expansions and it can be extremely good in PvE content, make you practically unkillable and perfect for soloing the games toughest PvE content and many of it's strongest bosses.The games toughest PVE content....In Soldiers gear?I would really like to see you or @Randulf.7614 to post a video soloing truly challenging content in Soldier's gear.You don't have to do the real hard stuff even....a video of you soloing a desert bounty (doesn't have to be Legendary) in soldier's gear will suffice.

I think the two of you are offering this new player absolutely awful advice.Post a video.Prove me wrong.