Irensaga.6935

Just pick a class that looks cool and give it a shot. You can always use your second character slot to create and delete characters in different classes to test run later.

I did it with a power-greatsword Chrono build. Long range attacks and phantasms allow you to keep moving away from the boss while applying damage, and dropping wells for CC and extra damage.

Wonder why they remove stuff like that from the game. Glad I got my greatsword skin.

I have a Necro and I don't like that part of it either. I'm eventually going to unlock the Reaper specialization in Heart of Thorns content - so I can ditch the minions and run around with a high-damage greatsword build.

Thanks for posting. Answers my questions.

Do you have a skill rotation posted somewhere? Also, I admit I don't get your choice of weapon sigils. Sigil of Energy doesn't seem like it would ever proc - since you never swap weapons as an Elementalist. And what does Sigil of Corruption really do for you? Do you really get bonuses from stuff dying that often? Edit: Sorry, I missed your response to your own video on YouTube where you said the following about the rotation: "I'm pretty free-form on account of not participating in any organized group content. No practice golems or meta builds for me! But to deal damage I know I need to stay in fire, rotating between earth and air. This allows me to maintain that 25 might stack through Pyromancer's Puissance, combo blasts on fire fields, and fire aura detonations from focus fire 5 while also accessing my most damaging moves (e.g. pyrovortex). What you basically want to avoid is rotating in while the moves you need are still on cooldown. Simple enough. Just keep rotating back to fire, then rotate to whatever alternate element (earth or air) you didn't rotate into on the previous pass. Use the combo blasts like earth 2 and 4 on your fire fields to keep that might going. Also remember that with this build you have evasive arcana, so you actually get some damage out of dodging in fire and earth as well as an additional combo blast from earth dodge. Also, rotating back into fire applies fire shield and deals damage so even dodging into the enemy while rotating into fire deals some nice damage while helping generate more might! Avoid rotating into water unless you need CC or healing. Likewise, air/earth is only really used for CC. Rotating into these elements is something you definitely need to do at the right time, but it's also a damage loss when you do it. So be aware of that. I'm sure an experienced raid weaver could give a more detailed critique on how to deal damage, but this is basically how I approach it. I am not following a strict rotation in my head, more of a general one that changes to meet the needs of my situation. Unlike organized group play, there's nobody else there to perform other roles for me!"

I really like that video. But... don't look at the screen - just look at the skill bar. Look how many different skills that Elementalist is going through. That's not really easy to do for a lot of players - myself included. I mean, I'm still tempted to try it out anyway. But I've never been that great at playing the piano in GW2.

I have two mains. Both female - because I like the more graceful aesthetic on female characters (if you want to think I'd prefer to stare at a hot girl for hours on end instead of the alternative, I won't stop you). One is human and one is Sylvari. I prefer the Sylvari because I really like the voice actress - could listen to her all day, seriously. One is a Mesmer and one is an Elementalist. I like the Sylvari Elementalist for her really flashy skills that just nuke things - but her low survivability has made her really hard to enjoy in expansion and Living World content. The other is a human Mesmer which is just more survivable by miles, and her skills really click with me. I'd make her my main character in an instant, except I don't like the human voice actress as much as the Sylvari one. Ashantara is right that most weapons are way oversized on female characters. But I think I solved that by selecting the right weapon skins. Bonetti's Rapier for one-handed swords and the Privateer's Greatsword skin. Looks real sleek on my Mesmer. The Opulent Defender shield skin looks really nice too. For armor skins, I put the starter boots on her (the lace-up knee high boots), the Order of Whispers skirt with the slit up the side, the chest armor from the Carapace Armor set you find in the Silverwastes... makes for an attractive look that doesn't look ridiculously impractical like the tier 3 Human racial armor set and doesn't scream out "trying too hard" like the Winged armor set items. My Sylvari Elementalist sported the same outfit combo as my Mesmer for a while and she looked pretty good in it too. But at the moment, I have her is something that looks a little more rugged. Cabalist hood and chest piece with Leystone pants from Dragon's Stand and the beginner skin for boots - Apprentice shoes. Get the colors right with more subdued hues, and she pulls off the experienced adventurer look really nicely. If you can't tell, it's all down to look and feel of the character with me. I have a Sylvari male Revenant with blue-gray skin tones and white mowhawk and the special Revenant armor set. I have a female Norn Guardian in the Tier 3 Norn racial armor, but although it looks great, the impracticality of it bugs me, so I want to swap over to a full Carapace armor set from the Silverwastes, once I get the legs by playing the Living World episode that unlocks them. I've got a female Charr Necromancer in pretty much the full Bladed Armor set from Verdant Brink, except for head - which has one of the racial Charr hoods you can purchase in the Black Citadel. And the special Mesmer shoulders you unlock in Path of Fire. My Asura male thief and Human male Engineer are still works in progress. I'm planning a male Charr Warrior and female Asura Ranger at some point when I'm willing to spring for more character slots. Just don't like Norn males, so doubt I'll bother with one. It's really down to how the character is going to look. What fighting animations are they going to do, and will it look good. I tried a Charr Guardian once, and just really didn't like the attack animations, switched to a Norn female and it was tons better. The only way to know this for yourself is to test drive a race/gender/class combo and see how you like the look of how they fight and talk during their personal story. I would highly recommend you test run a bunch of characters up to level 20 before settling on one. Getting to level 20 is easy. And by then, you'll have most of the weapons and attack animations available for you to look at.

You already know about throwing the boulders, so the only thing I can tell you is - you probably just need a lot of practice with moving, timing your dodges, and camera management. Camera management is something that some lower-skilled players just have a rough time with and the only way to get over it is lots of practice. Until then, I'd suggest joining a friendly active casual guild and begging for help from your guildmates in downing the instances. That's what I did for the fight with Mordremoth in HoT on my Elementalist (which is a lot harder than the Mouth of Zhaitan).

Get familiar with this gal on YouTube. She has YouTube video guides to every jumping puzzle in the game, as well as a lot of points of interest and all mastery points as well. https://www.youtube.com/user/AyinMaiden

I wouldn't necessarily level grind every class to 80. But I would level grind the first two classes to get a good feel for the game, unlock armor skins, see the story through a couple variations and so on. After that, sure - use a booster if you like. Or blow some of those tomes of experience to speed things up.

Another thing to keep in mind. When you complete a golden heart on the map by doing quest tasks in the area - it unlocks an NPC with the heart over their head. You can talk to this NPC and they will sell you special items - trinkets, armor, weapons, miscellaneous stuff... You purchase this stuff with Karma - represented by a purple triangle. You accumulate Karma by completing heart quests and completing the events that spawn around the maps. When you are a first-time player, it is sometimes worth doing these heart quests in order to unlock the NPCs - not because the equipment is any good for your character. It may or may not be - depending on character level. But because once you purchase a piece of armor, you can unlock the ARMOR SKIN for that armor. That goes onto your account, and now that piece of armor's look will be available to ANY of your characters. All you have to do is spend a transmutation charge, and you can make any piece of armor look like that armor skin you unlocked. Usually, different heart NPCs around the same map will be offering pieces of the same armor set. Alternatively, buy-to-play players can get all these armor skins off the Auction House by blowing a lot of money. But you probably don't have a lot of money. So grinding heart vendors naturally is probably still an efficient way to unlock armor skins for later for you. I wouldn't waste your transmutation charges though until you've acquired a set of level 80 armor you actually want to keep. You'll want to keep your character looking fly, after all.

Bunker ele works I assume - if you've mastered that piano-playing style with the keyboard. Otherwise, you're screwed.

You've already looked at the resources I would have recommended. Can you give a more detailed example of a typical fighting encounter where you are struggling?

If I had it all to do over again, I'd probably main Mesmer and Guardian. Not so simple they get boring, but not so difficult that I'm unable to ever play them at full potential. I got a wife, work and kids... so I don't exactly have time to become a true MMO master.

Most of the people I've learned from say that class difficulty goes like this: EASIEST CLASSES Necromancer - summon a bunch of minions and pressing auto-attack is probably enough to get you through the basic game story and up to level 80. If you want to get really good, you'll have to put in more effort of course, but with minions tanking damage for you and dishing it out, and effectively two health bars (one is your F1 ability), Necromancer is probably one of the most survivable and toughest classes out there. Warrior - toughness, hit points, and heavy armor make this class a lot more forgiving and survivable. Wide variety of effective weapons for you to work with. I find them kind of boring, but solid class. Hunter - Pet tanks damage and dishes it out without you having to do too much with it. Longbow works well at range, but eventually you'll want to transition to more of a close combat style for maximum damage. Easy mechanics. Guardian - Not really a tank class, more like a heavy armor mage class. Has very low hit points - so less survivable than the Warrior, but heavy armor helps with survivability. Solid weapon skill sets that are easy to learn and do well with. MEDIUM CLASSES Revenant - Heavy armor, weapon skills that are harder to make work effectively than the Guardian or Warrior. You have to learn how to swap between two different sets of support abilities depending on which legendary character you are channeling. Engineer - Durable and puts out damage easy enough - but you have to learn to swap between multiple tool kits in order to get best damage output. That can be confusing. Mesmer - You fight by generating and destroying clones along with other various abilities, that can take some getting used to. Very survivable class due to the monsters going after your clones. But you can't face-tank damage like the easier classes - survivability depends on you mastering and using a lot of evasion abilities. In raids, Mesmers are the tanks - which is not an easy role to play in a raid. HARDEST CLASSES Thief - super-fragile class. Relies on a lot of positioning and dodging to stay alive and use abilities best. You really have to work on a thin margin close to death to succeed. Which hard for new players. Elementalist - another really fragile class that dies easily. On top of that, they have four times more abilities you have to swap between than other characters. Like all classes - you get five basic combat abilities that change depending on the weapon equipped. But with Elementalists, those abilities change depending on what elemental magic you are attuned to. So you'll have five combat abilities when attuned to Fire magic. But then you switch to Water magic and you get five completely different weapon skills. Same for Earth and Air. This effectively gives you 20 different skills you need to keep track of and swap between. Some builds can kind of get away with just using Fire or Air the whole time for big damage - but both your damage and survival is going to depend on you switching out skillfully between elements for the single spells you need to make yourself that much better. This becomes necessary in the more difficult content. Problem of too many abilities gets even worse when you pick up the Weaver elite spec in Path of Fire.

Disadvantage with Necro for the original poster is that it isn't really a big ranged class actually. Staff is the longest range weapon they have and staff is more about dropping negative conditions on groups of enemies than it is about damage. Staff damage on Necro frankly sucks. Axe has better DPS and is a ranged weapon, but it's a really short range - you might as well be in melee to be honest. That leaves scepter I guess. Mesmer is hard to play really well, but it's not really hard to learn and do OK with. Just fix yourself up a power-Greatsword build slap down two clones and a phantasm in a hurry and use the greatsword to shoot energy beams from a distance. Really pretty easy, and a lot more survivable than Elementalist. I decided to main an Elementalist when I first started the game simply because I really liked all the flashy spell abilities. They look cool. I always feel really cool running around flashing off damage spells. But man... that was a hard experience for a newbie. I - died - sooo - much. Can't recommend the class to other newbs unless the abilities really speak to you. But if you do go Elementalist, the easiest way to do it is to just use a staff and camp on the Fire attunement all the time to keep things simple. That will serve you OK all the way through the basic game. But after that - you're gonna seriously struggle unless you learn that "piano playing" style you mentioned.

Actually, Necromancer is largely a selfish class. All about the damage. Summon a bunch of minions and watch the damage stack up. Necros don't actually provide a lot of buffs to allies. They do chill and bleed and fear and stuff to boost their own damage, and they have some good condition damage builds that stack damage by doing damage-over-time and negative status effects on enemies. But you can also run a Necro pure power and just do a lot of damage. It's probably the simplest class - just drop a full set of minions and auto-attack. Elementalist, is great at burst damage, but can also stack a lot of burning condition damage as well. They are really fragile and probably the hardest class to learn and master in the game in my opinion. Lots of stuff will just curb-stomp you. Your best survival strategy is to melt everything before it can hit back. The heal ability in water stance is more of a side-benefit than a feature of the class. You can weave in some water abilities into your skill rotation to make your character a bit more survivable. You can also weave in some earth abilities for defensive buffs. Simplest build to learn as Elementalist is just use a staff and camp in the fire attribute most of the time. The damage is good enough that you'll probably do alright up until you face Zhaitan at the end of the core game. But expect to be fragile if stuff doesn't die fast enough. Elementalists only get good at group healing in Heart of Thorns content, when the Tempest specialization becomes available. And even then Hunters using the "Druid" class make better healers. Mesmer can go either power or condition damage. They have group utility in being able to provide the "alacrity" buff to groups, and - believe it or not - they are actually the meta-tanks for raids right now - due to all their hard-evade skills like "Blurred Frenzy". They are pretty survivable in solo play due to all the clones getting attacked instead of you.

out of curiosity, what kind of keybind setup are you using?

I play both of these as my main characters. I'm not a skilled player - just an average player. Really skilled people will have a different experience than I did. I mained my Ele first and played it all the way through Zhaitan, Heart of Thorns, Living World, and then Path of Fire. Let me tell you - it was pretty brutal. I got curb-stomped all-the-time. Ele is just so darn squishy, unless you are really good with your skill rotation. Things two-shot you... Every boss encounter in Living World and Path of Fire was just a grind - dying repeatedly until the boss was finally worn down. I tried Weaver during Path of Fire and... man, it's really cool. The abilities are fun and flashy and so much variety, but that rotation is just nuts. Really complicated. I never got competent at it, and I just died so much. Around about the Domain of Istan - fighting the end boss - I got sick of it and put my Ele on the backburner and picked up my other main - my Mesmer and ran her through Heart of Thorns. Wow, huge difference. I just tore through HoT content with my power-greatsword. Drop clones and phantasms and half the incoming damage goes to them leaving me free to drop AOE wells and focus on shatters and keeping clones up. I was able to solo content that I never survived on my ele. I was just amazed how hard to kill my Mesmer was. It took me over a dozen tries on my Elementalist to defeat Mordremoth at the end of HoT, and in the end I had to give up and ask my guildies to come bail me out. On my Mesmer however, I downed him on the fourth try. It was a dramatic difference in survivability. Again, I'm not saying Elementalist can't solo PoF content or anything. I've seen videos of people doing it. I'm just saying that a "filthy-casual" like me had a really hard time keeping my Ele alive. The rotation on Elementalist, whether you're playing core, Tempest, or Weaver - is really complicated, with all the switching between the four elements for the optimal rotation. And Weaver is even more complicated. Hey, if you really like the way Weaver plays and all the flashy moves, great - go play it. I think it's a fun class. But just keep in mind, it's got a high skill threshold.

I'd personally go on group finder and look for groups like: "RIBA" in SilverwastesChak Gerent in Tangled DepthsOctovine in Auric Basinthe meta event on Domain of Istan Maybe others can suggest some other good PvE farm events.

My own personal experience is that three to four players making a bit of an effort can successfully defend a camp. Two players if they're both decent. One player if that player is a real try-hard.

I was late to the party myself getting the roller beetle. But I managed OK. I needed help from another player to down the boss beetle in the Silverwastes however, and it took me a while to figure out how to trigger the event. Can't remember what my issue was... But I remember it stumping me for a while. People here in the forum set me straight.

I'm a 45 year old dad with kids. I found a guild called "New Outriders" that consists mostly of older married people with minimal drama. Casual guild that doesn't care if you always "represent" the guild and isn't picky about whether you want to be part of other guilds. They have a presence in a variety of games, not just GW2. The times I've done stuff with them were pretty fun. I'll admit that I have a weird schedule that doesn't match up with most guild members. So I'm not really on when most of them are. We have a website - check it out. https://www.newoutriders.org/ Edit: They also have their own Discord

I've also fallen behind on Living World. I just got to Thunderhead Keep and am trying to clear the personal story there. Because of how far behind I was, I never bothered getting the Griffon and so far, I haven't really suffered much for that decision. I'm considering skipping the Skyscale as well, since I've heard it's a real grind. So far, the basic mounts have been all the real mobility I need. It's annoying when I join a group in group-finder and they all hop on their overpowered skyscales, and I have to really work to keep up. But I'm coping so far. I think the skyscale is frankly broken in how mobile it is, and how it apparently makes the griffon completely pointless. It's kind of soured me on getting one. Hopefully I won't miss it too much going into the next season.