Irensaga.6935

Or I guess it might be better to ask if you were trying for a Condition damage build or just a power build. Because power-Weavers are pretty popular actually. In which case, just go Berserkers.

What are you going to use the Weaver for? Fractales and Raids? PvP? Or just Open World stuff?

Just walking into the first Heart of Thorns map is a massive spoiler for the entire Living World story that led up to it.

Nothing like watching people complain about stuff they got for free on the Internet.

I think you just had bad luck. Keep joining groups in the group finder. You'll get there.

I like Marauder for a lot of end-game builds. But you're not even going to see much Marauder gear while leveling anyway. It's a specialized stat set that only drops on special end-game gear rewards and end-game crafting recipes. So you likely won't even see any such gear while leveling anyway. You can't buy it off the Auction House. Just stick to Berserker while leveling. Once you're level 80 and have finished killing Zhaitan, you can start thinking about slowly accumulating exotic gear with special stat lines like Marauders, Vipers or Diviners that are only found with some difficulty. Basic power gear is all you need for leveling. Actually, you may even find it doesn't matter what stat line you go with while leveling - because a lot of the content is pretty low in difficulty anyway. Just slap on whatever gear you find that gives you the highest power stat - no matter what the other stats are - and you'll probably be fine.

I don't wan to come off as some end-game expert. I just do open world - no raids and only occasional Fractales and dungeons. I mained an Elementalist for quite a while. Tempest was the spec I had the most success on. Staff core Ele was high damage, but not very flexible. Didn't ever click with Weaver. Too complicated. "Fresh Air" Tempest has heavy damage in Air attunement and melts stuff fast. Dagger and Scepter are my two favorite main-hand weapons. Kind of squishy class though and tends to get curb-stomped by enemy damage in tougher maps in Heart of Thorns, Living World and Path of Fire. I got frustrated with how easy Ele dies fighting Joko in Living World and switched over to my other oldest character - my Mesmer. So far, I liked Mirage with axe main-hand. The constant dodges make the character surprisingly resistant to damage. She killed Mordremoth so much more easily than my Elementalist did. Waaay more tanky. And the phantasms constantly apply damage at range, allowing you to focus on dodging and staying alive. But honestly, I like Chronomancer better for Open World. I run Greatsword as my main damage weapon. When I get mobbed with enemies, I swap to sword main-hand and shield. You can switch shield out for pistol or focus or sword if you like according to preference. They're all pretty good. Lead with the greatsword phantasm, drop multiple wells, and keep enemies at range applying greatsword auto-attacks. Switch to sword when pressured. Life in Heart of Thorns was sooo much better on a Mesmer. Chrono just flows so well, powerful long-range tagging, options for killing break bars, AOE for groups of enemies, and lots of tankiness due to enemies going after clones instead. My third favorite would have to be Guardian. It's not a tank class, due to the really low HP Guardians have. Think of Guardians as magic users wearing plate armor. Lots of options for damage, lots of support buffs to allies. I like scepter best for damage. Greatsword is another favorite for damage. I like carrying a staff around for tagging lots of enemies during events. It's a class that's always been solid since the game launched and is still in a pretty good place. I'm not as experienced in the class, but I like it so far. As for healers in this game... as you know, there really aren't any. But Anet did put out a few specs that can do pure support and heals in group raids. Ranger has the Druid specialization that allows the Ranger to become as close to a pure healer as you get in this game.Elementalist in Tempest can do some serious aura-sharing and act as a group healer.Revenant does have some heal/support options by channeling Ventari.Some flavors of Engineer can share buffs fairly well and Banner Warriors can do something similar. But probably Druid or Tempest if you want to be the healer in a Fractale or Raid. Check out Metabattle for some Fractale and Raid builds on each class to get more details.

And I played this game for two years on a free account without purchasing the expansions. I've been playing for five years now and still haven't entered a raid. So I find your obsession with raid builds as a new player to be a bit misguided.

Look dude - don't play. Go download Azure Lane or play BDO or something. Or take up woodcarving. But you obviously don't want to play this game and keep making excuses why you don't want to play it. No one is telling you what you can't play except yourself. If you like warrior, then just play it and quit whining about being a banner slave. If you just came here to complain and argue with everyone trying to give you advice, you're wasting everyone's time - and more importantly your own.

I find running meta events in Verdant Brink, Auric Basin and Tangled Depths a lot more fun than leveling was. I think you're closing yourself off to a lot of options though. For example, thinking warrior is fun... until you find out people use them for banners in Fractales and Raids. So you decide against warrior - even though, let's face it, you were never going to seriously raid or run fractales in the first place. So what was the point of dropping warrior over a playstyle you weren't even going to do anyway?

Just about any class can run a condi-build. Engineers with flamethrowers/bombs/grenades are pretty good at it. Necromancers obviously with chill and poison. Thieves can run poison. Elementalists can max out on burn potential (Guardians can do burning well too). Drop in on MetaBattle and see if you can find some builds running "Vipers" armor advertised as condition builds that tickle your fancy.

Odd... my axe/pistol and greatsword mirage has been doing quite a lot of damage on the Crystal Desert maps, and has been surprisingly surviveable due to being hard for enemies to hit. I think a lot depends on the trait-line you use. Also, Woodenpotaoes has been doing a YouTube video series on powerful Open World builds for each class. He hasn't gotten all the classes yet, but here's the playlist.

It's also worth checking out the weapon animations for each race and class on YouTube. The way some races do the Guardian weapon skill animations might really turn you off. If you can't find it on YouTube, it's not a big deal to test-run a Charr Guardian up to level 20 just to see how the attacks look, and then delete the level 20 character and try it again with a Sylvari. Level 20 is so easy to get to that's it's really not much trouble.

The Guardian is basically a spellcaster class. Just a caster that wears heavy armor. Relatively low HP, lots of buffing, energy shielding, holy fire, and spellslinging. That never fit with the blunt practical, in-your-face style of the Charr to me. I'd go male Sylvari for a Guardian personally. It fits the personality of the voice actor. My male Sylvari unfortunately is a Revenant - which is also fine. I gave him a nice neutral blue-gray skin tone, used the inhuman face setting - where the face is almost all slabs of bark, and gave him a striking white mowhawk for hair. He looks good in the Revenant armor, the Sylvari and Nightmare-Court themed armors are actually pretty good, and he looks good in most of the higher-end armor sets. Charr, in heavy armor are all about the massive spikes and a juggernaut kind of look. It looks great, but I always thought Revenant or Warrior fit them better thematically. Running around in all that spikey armor slinging pretty blue energy balls at the enemy with a scepter as a Guardian seems a little odd. Same for throwing energy orbs with the staff. And all those blue-fire auras... I mean, you CAN color your Charr in pretty white and blue colors with greys to match thematically... but why would you want to?

Go play Eve Online.

As a general game design philosophy - I don't think story should be inaccessible to unskilled players. I don't mind if you want to add challenge modes or difficulty levels or something for veterans. But you shouldn't have to be "super-gud" in order to defeat Caudecus or Mordremoth or whatever.

You don't have to play all the content on one character. I mained an Elementalist through the basic game story, and then through Heart of Thorns. But I'm skipping directly to Path of Fire with my Guardian. My Necromancer skipped directly to Heart of Thorns without finishing her personal story. My Elementalist dies so easily I've been kind of tired of playing it. I'm probably going to jump directly into the remaining Living World chapters with my Mesmer. The others are right - you don't have to stick with one character. Achievements are all account-bound, not character bound anyway.

Alts and extra characters are the only things you should use boosts on. With your main, you're better off doing normal leveling and learning the class, getting masteries and acheivements, and building your world-presence naturally. The level boosts are better used on characters you don't care enough about to play through the entire game with - namely alts.

You know... this isn't like picking a career in the real world. It's a game - you do it for fun in your spare time. If you play a lot of alts, so what? If you aren't able to grind out end-game content as efficiently, so what? Do whatever is fun and stop stressing about it. Your choices here aren't going to ultimately matter.

Don't even bother with the other left-right movement keys. Strafe is all you need. E is forward for me, D is backward, F is strafe right, S is strafe left. G is skill 1, R, W, Q, V, C, X, Z are all mapped to other skills and A is weapon swap. Left Shift is the interaction button. T, H, and B are also mapped to skills. Mapping "turn right" or "lateral left" is a waste of convenient keys you need for other things.

I never manage to hold onto more than 200 gold at one time it seems. I went as high as 300-something once. But I tend to play "fashion-wars", so I'm always blowing my money on the trading post on new skins, or the racial armor and weapon vendors.

Some of the PoF hero points are repeatable like this as well, so keep a lookout for that.

It's a good idea to keep an eye out for a reasonable price on at least one version of black dye (there's like over a dozen different shades of black), and one version of white dye. Those are the two that can get the most expensive - aside from dyes that add shining or whatnot. But they are also really essential for getting a good color contrast scheme on your character. Black and white are such good contrasts and accents to a lot of outfits. If you can get at least one of each, you can put off buying the more expensive versions of both.

If the plan is to only use two toons - you won't need to buy inventory space for a while. Just create a few mule characters in the slots you aren't going to use - buy them big inventory bags, and dump all your junk on them.

Leveling a crafting discipline to max level is pretty expensive. I'd recommend taking it easy on crafting as a new player and doing the leveling in manageable chunks rather than trying to burn all the way to max level in an afternoon. You'd have to buy most materials off the Auction House, and that will deplete all your gold short-order as a new player. Don't use a level 80 boost until you've leveled up one or two characters the normal way - or you'll be completely lost at level 80 with no idea what to do. Don't worry, leveling to 80 is not that hard and you won't have to wait too long. Besides, even higher level characters are dropped down in level to match the map they are on - so even in groups of level 80 players running events on a map, you won't feel completely useless. Don't obsess too much about 100% completing a map. It might be worth it to complete all the hearts, all the points of interest, all the vistas, and all the hero points in your starting area just to try it out, and because the exp gain is so good in your first map. But after that, don't bother unless you really enjoy playing that way. Move on to other maps and mess around. Always grab events that spawn on your map nearby - because the exp rewards are higher than other activities usually. Keep in mind, you can always come back to these unfinished maps later as a level 80 character and complete them then. Most players do this - since loot drops from quests, events, and monsters on any map always scale to the level of the player. Dailies will also encourage max level players to revisit old maps. Make sure to do your personal story - it has BIG exp rewards for your character, and will help you not get lost in all the maps. Upgrade your inventory bags whenever you can. It helps a lot. Always carry a stack of Basic Salvage Kits for any gray, blue, or green gear items you don't need. Breaking the gear down into raw materials usually sells for more money than the items themselves on the Auction House, and stockpiling the raw materials also helps when you decide to craft stuff. Always carry a stack of mining, lumbering, and herb gathering tools and gather stuff whenever you see it on the map (it grants a small amount of exp and helps your stockpile and gold). Do your dailies each day. Complete three of the four daily options and you'll be rewarded two gold. For a new player, that's a big deal and is the most reliable way to build up your money supply early in the game. Once you get to level 80, you can look at farming the Silverwastes or other gold farming locations in the expansion game maps. But two gold for three dailies is easy money. If you're facing a tough map at max level like the Silverwastes, or the Heart of Thorns maps, or stuff in Path of Fire that's obviously meant to be run as a group - use the Group Finder tool in your social menu option. Go to "Open World" and see if there's a group advertising for running that content. Join the squad, and then go to the map. If your squad members in the upper left corner are transparent - that means they are all in a different instance of the same map you are on. To get to their map, right-click on one of the members and select the option "join in..." whatever map you are on. You'll be teleported to your squad's instance, and be able to run content with them - which will make everything a lot easier. Oh, and don't do what I did and start out with an Elementalist - they're pretty hard to play with on the later game content (though they do OK leveling). Unless of course, you just love their animations and playstyle and general vibe, in which case, go right ahead.