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Guide to getting the Warclaw for WvW Newbies


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This is intended to be a complete guide to unlocking the Warclaw, aimed at people who have never played World vs World (WvW) before.

Summary

1) You must own Path of Fire.

2) Put 1 point into the Warclaw Mastery Ability.

3) Complete the Warclaw Companion meta-achievement:

  • Spend 250 Badges of Honor (from enemies, chests and other WvW rewards, and from achievement chests so you may have enough already)
  • Spend 50 Skirmish Claim Tickets (from Skirmish Reward Chests, earned automatically when playing WvW – not in the Edge of the Mists – and from other Warclaw collection items)
  • Complete the Warclaw reward track
  • Kill some guards for a random drop (found at all enemy objectives)
  • Capture a camp
  • Capture a tower
  • Capture a keep

4) Buy an item for 8g from the Warclaw vendor

 

You’ll also need another 125 ability points (from World Ranks) to unlock the Warclaw’s extra abilities, but only if you play WvW regularly as they don’t work in PvE. Many of these steps can be combined, and I estimate it will take no more than 10 hours to complete the whole thing. The ones to focus on are capturing a camp, tower and keep because they’re not going to happen on their own, whereas everything else can be obtained while working on those three, or by following the same process.

 

Everything except buying items from the Warclaw vendor, capturing a camp and earning Skirmish Claim Tickets can be done in the Edge of the Mists (EOTM), which is a shared ‘borderland’ map with multiple instances and therefore no queue, so if you’re in a queue I recommend going there to make some progress while you wait.

 

At least some of the pieces of Warclaw body armour awarded for completing other parts of the collection give 5 Skirmish Claim Tickets each (I’m not sure about the ones from the reward track and from guards), so it’s possible to earn between 25 and 35 tickets from the collection, leaving just 15-25 to earn from skirmish chests.


Things to know before you start

The Warclaw is not needed in PvE & you cannot unlock it without actively playing WvW

Unlike the Gift of Battle there’s no work-around here, you have to play at least a bit of WvW to unlock it. But it’s a dedicated WvW mount and all its abilities are specific to WvW, so unless you want to play WvW or really like how it looks there’s no need to get it.

 

It doesn’t matter which world you’re on

Leaderboard position has very little impact on your individual rewards. Don’t worry about your worlds score or potential points or the difference between a match and a skirmish, certainly don’t switch worlds just to get the Warclaw.

 

You will die, and die often

But waypoints and repairs are free so the only problem is having to run back. Do not wait around for people to revive you, there isn’t time. (Unless they’re right next to you and there’s no enemies nearby.)

 

Play at peak times if you can

There will be more people to play with, more to fight against and therefore more opportunities to capture objectives, earn skirmish tickets and progress the reward track.

 

WvW often involves waiting, but that’s ok

You’ll wait for a group to form, wait for the group to move off, wait for siege to be built, wait for siege to destroy walls, wait while you claim points, wait for the enemy to arrive, wait for the enemy to leave, wait for people to clear their bags/go to the toilet/get on the same group chat…and sometimes (at least if you’re not on the group chat) it won’t be clear why you’re waiting. Sometimes you’ll also spend what seems like ages heading towards an objective only to abandon it and go somewhere else because plans have changed. But that’s ok, it’s an important part of playing tactically, which gets you better rewards in the long run, and as participation (needed for skirmish tickets and reward track progress) decays slowly over time you’re not really losing anything by waiting.


First Steps

Activate the Warclaw Mastery Ability

Open the WvW menu and click on the 3rd tab on the left side. This is the Rank and Abilities tab, they're in alphabetical order so in English the Warclaw is the last one in the list. Ability points are earned by gaining ranks in WvW and ranks are gained by earning XP. If you’ve never played WvW before you’ll have 1 point to spend, which is enough to unlock the Warclaw Companion Achievement (under Competative > World vs. World Warclaw). (Don’t forget to check this periodically to kittenign new points you’ll earn as you play, I recommend unlocking War Gliding as soon as you can.) If you’ve played WvW before and already spent your points you can get them refunded by speaking to the World Ability Master in your home base, or you can get more by earning WXP.

 

For now don’t worry about the rest of the ability track – this upgrades the Warclaw in the same way masteries upgrade the other mounts, but it’s not needed to unlock the mount.

 

Activate the Warclaw Reward Track

Click on the 3rd tab in the WvW menu, find the Warclaw reward track in the list and click on it. This activates it so it will progress as you earn reward points. For now you can forget about it – the track will progress as you play WvW and every so often you’ll get a chest in the bottom right corner with some rewards. Eventually that will be the Warclaw Armor Box with the Helmet required for the collection.

 

Use boosters

If you have any WXP or reward track boosters use them, but for short-term ones you may want to wait until the action starts so you don’t waste it. Don’t forget to get the free one from the Guild Bartender in your guild hall if you can.

 

Now it’s time to start playing WvW!

It’s not really possible to put the rest of the process into order because you’ll get badges of honor from everything you do, skirmish tickets from raising your participation level by killing enemies and capturing objectives and what order you capture things in depends on what’s going on when you play, so this is general advice about playing WvW.


Starting to play

When you open the WvW menu you have 5 maps to choose from – Eternal Battlegrounds, 1 Desert Borderlands, 2 Alpine Borderlands and Obsidian Sanctum. Ignore that last one – it’s a jumping puzzle. But you can choose any of the others. I recommend picking one with little/no queue if you can just because it’s easier to get in. (I also recommend the desert borderland, for reasons I’ll explain below.)

 

There’s also the Edge of the Mists, which is like a Borderlands map, but with multiple instances shared between servers (servers are grouped by colour) so there’s no queue. You can’t earn Skirmish Claim Tickets there and there are no camps, but you can do everything else to get the Warclaw so it’s a good option if all the main maps have a queue.

 

You’ll start off in your team’s home base, which is completely safe from enemies and has a bunch of NPCs offering different services. This is a good time to check out the map and sort your build out. WvW uses the same equipment as in PvE (unlike PvP which has a unique system) and your skills and traits will copy over but it may be worth setting up a special WvW build. If you're not sure what to use you can find lots of build guides online, but I strongly recommend using a speed boost.

 

The WvW map

At first it’s really confusing, there’s loads of coloured lines and symbols, some of them are moving, and it will probably just look like a mess. Basically symbols are control points and the colour shows who controls them. The lines show the area controlled by that point – important because you can only glide in areas your team controls.

There are 4 main kinds of control points: Keeps, Towers, Camps and Ruins.

  • Keeps are the hardest to take over – they have several layers of defences and are the most likely to be defended, they need a big group.
  • Towers only have 1 layer of defences, but still need siege to get in.
  • Camps have no walls, just a few guards so they can be taken solo.
  • Ruins are undefended and often unclaimed because they’re not as useful and ownership decays over time.
  • There’s also Stonemist Castle in the middle of Eternal Battlegrounds, Shrines in desert borderlands and Sentries on all the maps. (None of which are required for the Warclaw, but they all contribute to your reward track and skirmish ticket progress.)

 

The Match Overview tab on the WvW menu will show you what each team controls on each map. It may seem like a map where your team is winning is best, but that means you have fewer objectives to take over and getting participation credit will be harder so it may actually be better to go to one where you’re losing.

 

Earning badges, skirmish tickets and reward track progress

Your skirmish tier, points you’ll earn at the next ‘tick’, time remaining until that tick and your reward track progress is shown in a little pop-up menu above or below the map (depending on if the map is at the top or bottom of the screen).

 

You’ll earn more points for higher tier participation (Tier 6 is the maximum) and you raise your participation level by…well, participating. Killing enemies, claiming things, completing events, defending objectives etc. and you’ll get a reward chest each time you complete a step in the reward track or skirmish rewards.

 

Periodically you’ll also get WvW rank chests popping up above the map. The rank chests contain extra badges of honor and random loot, but most importantly they mean you’ve got another rank point to spend on the Ranks and Abilities tab.


When you first enter

Look for a commander tag – if there is one go join them. Follow them, attack what they attack, build siege when they place it, claim control points when you get to them. Try to actually pay attention to what’s going on rather than blindly following because you’ll learn more that way, but the important thing is to stick with the group and do what they do.

 

If there isn’t a commander tagMaybe switch maps (if there are others without a queue) to see if you can find one. But if not don’t give up. The best thing to do now is explore the map – even just roaming around aimlessly will help you learn your way around, which will come in useful later on. But there’s also likely to be stuff you can achieve on your own – claiming camps is best but you can also claim sentry points and shrines (this is why I recommend the Desert borderlands, it has more of this stuff) and ruins which will progress your reward track and skirmish tier.

 

Keep a look out for commander tags – one could turn up at any time and pay attention to the map and team chat channels. Or you might find a group of players running without a commander– they’re harder to spot (and sometimes don’t want randoms, they’ll let you know if that’s the case) but they can achieve just as much as a group with a commander – it’s just harder to attract new people without the tag.

 

If there’s more than 1 commander tagAsk in map chat which one to join, or see which one/s have their squad open so you can just right click and join. It’s likely one is the ‘main’ squad and one or more is a specialist one – a guild doing their own thing or a 2nd group sneaking into objectives – they’re less likely to want extra people. But it may just be that there’s enough people for multiple squads and you can join whichever.


From then on

Keeps going. Keep running with squads, claiming objectives, or exploring solo and claiming what you can until you’ve achieved your objectives. Sooner or later you will take at least 1 keep, tower and camp, and kill enough guards for the drop.

 

Carry supply whenever you can

But do not take it from Keeps or Towers. Camps are the best place to get it. It’s used to build siege and repair walls, so it’s useful to have and by carrying it (and being willing to spend it) you’re helping your team out.

 

Don’t attack walls or gates unless the commander says it’s ok

This will alert the enemy to the fact that you’re attacking (which using siege weapons doesn’t) which gives them time to come and stop you. Sometimes that’s ok because they’re busy elsewhere or there’s too few of them or whatever, sometimes it could ruin the whole attack.

 

Try to have fun

You may go in expecting to hate WvW, or at least thinking it’s not for you. But give it a go and you may find yourself enjoying it. I doubt I’m ever going to be a dedicated WvW player but I’ve had some great times playing and some memorable moments. (Also my only ascended drop.)

 

And if you really do hate it? Well, you don’t need to go back again (at least not until you want another unique reward.)

Edited by Danikat.8537
Changed formatting for the new forum
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Great summary.

Also let me add, many WvW guilds are running open raids to help anyone new to WvW to get their mounts. Some guilds may not be doing so, and may continue to run closed raids, so please respect that, but there are many WvW'ers happy to help anyone looking to explore the world of WvW and get the mount.

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(Bug appears to have been fixed.)

! Caution: be sure to put in one point of WvW abilities to the Warclaw before you start.! (This unlocks the collection.)!! ****! > https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/70467/warclaw-collection-blocking-issue! > @Rubi Bayer.8493 wrote! > There is currently a bug affecting the warclaw that prevents players from progressing on the collection.! >! > We are working on a fix for this.! >! > In the meantime, we would suggest not completing the warclaw reward track until after you unlock the collection in WvW.

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There's one additional requirement:After you complete the Complete the Warclaw Companion meta-achievement, you have to purchase one more item from the Warclaw vendor, which costs 8 gold.

As @Turkeyspit.3965 unfortunately discovered (and posted about), that vendor is only available on the Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds; they can't be found in EotM, Obsidian Sanctum, nor LA (or if they are there, they are well hidden).

tl;dr remain in BL/EB to visit the Warclaw vendor after you complete the collection

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:There's one additional requirement:After you complete the Complete the Warclaw Companion meta-achievement, you have to purchase one more item from the Warclaw vendor, which costs 8 gold.

Gotta say, I read everything that was released about this mount launch, and what was recorded from the live stream, and nothing was mentioned about purchasing anything from a vendor for 8 gold. That this minor, but extremely important detail wasn't included is very disappointing to me.

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@Turkeyspit.3965 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:There's one additional requirement:After you complete the Complete the Warclaw Companion meta-achievement, you have to purchase one more item from the Warclaw vendor, which costs 8 gold.

Gotta say, I read everything that was released about this mount launch, and what was recorded from the live stream, and nothing was mentioned about purchasing anything from a vendor for 8 gold. That this minor, but extremely important detail wasn't included is very disappointing to me.

It was odd, yeah. I tried to include everything I found about it in my summary post... and I didn't see it either.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:There's one additional requirement:After you complete the Complete the Warclaw Companion meta-achievement, you have to purchase one more item from the Warclaw vendor, which costs 8 gold.

Gotta say, I read everything that was released about this mount launch, and what was recorded from the live stream, and nothing was mentioned about purchasing anything from a vendor for 8 gold. That this minor, but extremely important detail wasn't included is very disappointing to me.

It was odd, yeah. I tried to include everything I found about it in my summary post... and I didn't see it either.

I've never seen that mentioned either. I've added a quick note for now and will build on it if necessary later. I can imagine that could be a nasty shock for some people when they think they've completed everything.
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@Aerlen.5326 said:Thank you so much! You're a hero for posting this.

I'm glad you appreciate it. I remember how confusing I found WvW when I started, and whenever I've gone back to it after a break. People on my server were nice enough to put up with me constantly asking questions while I was trying to figure out what to do, but hopefully this will give some people a head start.

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@Danikat.8537 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:There's one additional requirement:After you complete the Complete the Warclaw Companion meta-achievement, you have to purchase one more item from the Warclaw vendor, which costs 8 gold.

Gotta say, I read everything that was released about this mount launch, and what was recorded from the live stream, and nothing was mentioned about purchasing anything from a vendor for 8 gold. That this minor, but extremely important detail wasn't included is very disappointing to me.

It was odd, yeah. I tried to include everything I found about it in my summary post... and I didn't see it either.

I've never seen that mentioned either. I've added a quick note for now and will build on it if necessary later. I can imagine that could be a nasty shock for some people when they think they've completed everything.

Just as a 100% personal confirmation, after waiting in queue for 15mins (!) I went straight to the vendor, and was able to purchase the mount for 8g.

Not at all an unusual means of acquiring a mount, just very unusual that it wasn't mentioned in the media blitz leading up the patch.

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This is great - thanks. Although my conclusion is that I am in no hurry to get this thing. Estimated 10 hours for what amounts to a cosmetic in pve? Nah. I'm sure not having one will make WvW a bit less convenient, but I'm also sure I'll live without it. Nevertheless I'll do all this at my own casual pace. Thanks for the guide.

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@Biff.5312 said:This is great - thanks. Although my conclusion is that I am in no hurry to get this thing. Estimated 10 hours for what amounts to a cosmetic in pve? Nah. I'm sure not having one will make WvW a bit less convenient, but I'm also sure I'll live without it. Nevertheless I'll do all this at my own casual pace. Thanks for the guide.

Just keep an eye on the Daily Quests for WvW. Many of them are very easy, can be done solo, and usually involve you killing NPCs same as in PvE.

  • Mist Guard Killer
  • Camp Capturer
  • Land Claimer
  • Master of Monuments
  • Caravan Disruptor (hit that yak!)

All are very easy to complete, and will reward you with 1-2 Potions of WvW Experience. 80 of those potions will take your reward track from 0 to full, and if you spend some time in WvW doing these dailys, you will get reward track XP which reduces the amount of potions you will ultimately need.

Edit: added Caravan Disruptor - basically just kill 1 of those ugly yaks runnin' around.

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@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:It might be worth mentioning that when you put that first skill point on Warclaw, it does not actually unlock/give you the emblem until you enter a WvW map.

Oh yeah, that's good to know, I'll add it to the guide.

For some reason my first reaction was to join the queue for one of the main maps, then go to EOTM, then start looking at the menu, so I didn't notice.

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Great guide. One (minor) addition: If your client is set to another language than english, the warclaw track might not be the last one on the list (since the abilities are sorted alphabetically). In the german client for example, the ability track is called "Kriegsbestie" and as such found somewhere roughly in the middle of the list (this threw me off for a moment when I helped my daughter getting started with the whole process).

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@"Rasimir.6239" said:Great guide. One (minor) addition: If your client is set to another language than english, the warclaw track might not be the last one on the list (since the abilities are sorted alphabetically). In the german client for example, the ability track is called "Kriegsbestie" and as such found somewhere roughly in the middle of the list (this threw me off for a moment when I helped my daughter getting started with the whole process).

I didn't even think about that, I completely forgot that it would have a different name in other languages. I've edited the post to take out all (I think) mentions of where it appears in alphabetical lists.

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A little more more advice: tag everything. If you are alone, kill 1 guard at every tower or keep you pass. Same with camps if you can't manage to solo them. The reason for this is that in WvW the game remembers your participation. If you are still on the same map when the objective is captured by your team, you still get credit for the capture. This does NOT decay, it lasts as long as you are logged on. It does end if the other enemy captures team the objective though.

If you are in an objective that your team controls, and it is being attacked, try to spend some supply on repairing the wall/gate. This qualifies you for Objective Defender credit even if you don't manage to kill an enemy attacker. Of course, you only get defender if the objective holds out the whole timer countdown.

Pay attention to your contribution decay timer. If it reaches 0, you start to lose contribution and get less reward. You can reset it by killing a guard or supply dolyak or capturing a ruin, although these only give a very few minutes. Capturing a shrine or sentry sets the countdown to 5 minutes and capturing anything else or killing an enemy player gives 10 minutes (max). Note that if you leave WvW maps, your contribution does not decay. So please DO NOT go afk to get more rewards as your timer tics down. You can just pick up where you left off later.

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@CaelestiaEmpyrea.2617 said:If you are in an objective that your team controls, and it is being attacked, try to spend some supply on repairing the wall/gate. This qualifies you for Objective Defender credit even if you don't manage to kill an enemy attacker. Of course, you only get defender if the objective holds out the whole timer countdown.While I agree with the rest of your tips, I feel that this one isn't as straight forward as it sounds. You do qualify for object defender, but if you just dump your supply into e.g. a wall that is being bombarded by an enemy catapult (thus effectively wasting the supply as it only delays the enemy by one or two catapult shots) that could be detrimental to your own team. If for example your supplies are all that's needed to build a ballista that kills the catapult, then you might just make the difference between defending or losing the tower or keep in the first place.

Spending supplies for repairing stuff can be very situational, and if you are in a party or squad and unsure if it's a good idea or a waste of good supplies, don't hesitate to ask the people you are playing with.

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@Rasimir.6239 said:

@CaelestiaEmpyrea.2617 said:If you are in an objective that your team controls, and it is being attacked, try to spend some supply on repairing the wall/gate. This qualifies you for Objective Defender credit even if you don't manage to kill an enemy attacker. Of course, you only get defender if the objective holds out the whole timer countdown.While I agree with the rest of your tips, I feel that this one isn't as straight forward as it sounds. You do qualify for object defender, but if you just dump your supply into e.g. a wall that is being bombarded by an enemy catapult (thus effectively wasting the supply as it only delays the enemy by one or two catapult shots) that could be detrimental to your own team. If for example your supplies are all that's needed to build a ballista that kills the catapult, then you might just make the difference between defending or losing the tower or keep in the first place.

Spending supplies for repairing stuff can be very situational, and if you are in a party or squad and unsure if it's a good idea or a waste of good supplies, don't hesitate to ask the people you are playing with.

I partially agree, in that if Objective Defender happens to be a daily, the squad, the map, and your server will survive if you use 10 supply to 'one-tap' a wall that is being trebbed/catad.

Outside of that, yes, if the wall is under siege, the only reason to repair is if you know reinforcements are coming and you need to buy time. Otherwise it's just a waste of supply.

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This is great, thank you!

I got my first Skirmish Chest reward, but not sure what the best thing to take from it is, so I'm just letting it sit there. Should I take the 6 heroics? Is that the most scarce thing? I seem to have plenty of Badges of Honor, from both the old days and I still do 1-2 WvW dailies for my dailies, as I find them pretty easy to do.

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I always take the Testimony of Heroics too, for the same reason.

I can't remember the last time I had less than 2,000 badges of honour and I don't play WvW that much and use them for an easily daily achievement (and to unlock cultural skins) whenever Big Spender comes up and everything else I can get from other sources. Especially now I've got the Permanent Portable Provisioner which sells siege, tricks and traps and food.

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