Hsanrb.1570

How many people "started over" from Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2, how many people still play Guild Wars 1? Who even said GW3 is an MMO? Why do you even phrase it like its "starting over" if its a continuation of the story arch? Why are you crazy enough in 2024 to still have a "main game" and not play other things. There is a point in every MMO's life cycle where you look at the story and go "I'm not even sure these are connected anymore..." and instead of trying to rebuild the engine of a living game... sometimes its just better to improve the engine with a fresh story, fresh systems, learn what people love and people hate about your franchise and take that wisdom to build something that should (but not always) be better. MMO's are not about numbers, achievements, progress... its about interactions, memories, friendships. You will always carry those with you, even if the platform (the game) changes. Not everyone is going to be excited to play the new adventure and get off the train, some new people might use this as a reason to join at the next station. So even the premise "Starting over" is just a falsehood. So when it arrives, you get to make the same choice as those before you. Play the old game, play the new game, or play a different game... but none of those is an act of starting over.

Relax, You haven't done anything wrong and there is nothing you have done that isn't fixable (There are enough hero points for every elite specialization, and there are enough ways to earn new gear to fix any errors you THINK you have done.) What you need to do is take a step back and think how the pieces of the class fit together. Instead of following a build... read the tooltips of the skills and abilities and figure out how they work together. Then take 5m and figure out "Can what these skills offer me work when I'm doing content on my own as part of the story, or doing open world content while I get from what I have to where I want to go. IF the answer is NO... then put the healer build aside and start a second build slot (you get 2 by default) and be willing to use a second set of skills on your own and when you get to an open world meta or in a small group that can utilize that healing build to possibly switch to that if it helps. DO NOT SELL, OR SALAVAGE ANY MORE GEAR. 99% of the time suboptimal still works and as long as you can buff people who do DPS, or provide enough CC to help with the open world metas than you probably can get away with lower DPS numbers than you expect. You do need to get to 80 on all your slots, and while Exotic is preferred... you might not always be able to fill every slot with exotic immediately. The real problem is if you need to do story, or the meta isn't active so you are doing hero points you need to cover that gap. I would advise just taking whatever gear you currently have, go to the Lions Arch Aerodrome, go to the Training area on your own and just look for things that work. "Can I provide CC if an enemy has a defiance bar?" "Am I comfortable with the weapons I currently use that I can engage/disengage or avoid abilities enemies might throw towards me?" You might find that changing 1 or 2 skills or that a particular weapon class might not fit your style. Don't worry about the DPS numbers of the training bot in the Aerodrome, just look for skill interactions and learn what options you DO have. IF you walk away with a boon party build and a separate "I'm playing on my own" build then you are making progress. Personal experience, every single build I read for my ranger suggests a long bow, but I just hate playing it... so I tried Short Bow and while it might not be better, it fit the way I play better so I haven't gone back. I was nervous about how much CC I needed so I used an elite skill... and as I played more I learned I had other tools in my kit that provided CC that I changed my elite skill and got the benefits of both. Play something you enjoy that fits the challenge presented in front of you, not play something you looked up but isn't fun at all. Be willing to look at something and go "I was suggested to have X, Y and Z, but I don't like Y... can I find something else?" The answer is always yes. TLDR: Instead of trying to change your gear, try changing the skills with the gear you currently have. You may find two different builds based on the content you are approaching and by spending all this time focusing on the actual gear... you aren't fixing the real question about how to start progressing to that gear as a stepping stone. Be willing to play suboptimal and make conscious build/skill changes that ease the burden of acquiring the components of the build you are trying to get to. Don't focus on the small details, work on the bigger picture and you will get there and be amazing. Go one step at a time, don't try to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I think what this entire thread has come down to is you have preconceived notions about how Guild Wars 2 plays based on other experiences, whether they be other MMO's like WoW/FFXIV/Ever Quest/New World or even traditional RPG's like D&D/Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy/Shin Megami Tensei. What we are trying to tell you is you need to leave those preconceived notions at the door and play Guild Wars 2 for what Guild Wars 2 is. You can find what you are looking for in Guild Wars 2, but that does NOT mean Guild Wars 2 has a focus on those aspects of the game. I'll link a video (you only need to watch like 5-7m) that is trying to simplify what everyone has been trying to tell you, even going so far as to say "I had to replay an entire part of an expansion BECAUSE I didn't grasp what was going on because I compared it to other MMO's." You can skip the Starfield AD insert, but I think it helps clarify everything you have read to this point.

As someone who spent half of Heart of Thorns trying a Druid spec because healer and ultimately just chucking it, the amount of content you actually need a dedicated healer in is about as much as the amount of content you actually need gear better than Exotic to complete. 1) Everyone gets 1 self heal skill on their hotbar, most times roughly 15-25% of their HP in combat. 2) Following a build is only good when you are competent enough to survive the content without spending half of it on the floor in a rez state, otherwise sacrifice stats to put some survivability into your gear. 3) Feel free to go back to older content and identify some of the gear you get or earn some karma and fill out your gear from the vendors in the Orr region. Karma gear would be better, but you can get enough lvl 80 gear for like 30s if you want to go the common gear route... it can fill out anything really really bad or completely outpaced by the story. Also Heart of Thorns is a big wake up call if you've just been trudging along not really understanding the mechanics the game has tried to show you. If you can make in in Heart of Thorns, you will be well on your way to progressing through the rest of Guild Wars 2. I'd definitely stop watching guides, its actually hindering your ability to play the game far more than its helping you. Considering level 80 is as high as GW2 goes, and the gear you will be using will last the entire rest of the development of GW2... you need to consciously rethink what you think you know about GW2 in terms of items and gearing. PS: There is also the old MMORPG adage, The best way to heal through fight, is to just kill the target faster. Higher DPS means less healing, which means your healers can in turn do more DPS and the fights go faster.

IIRC you need to do the prologue (from the hero journal) to any expansion you would like to enter on a new character, so if you wanted to do Path of Fire instead of Heart of Thorns first (assuming you OWN those expansions) then you would need to do the prologue which lands you in the first explorable area of said expansions prologue. OR you can find a friend willing to port you to the first expansion zone. Either way would technically break story contiguity so I don't know how far you actually got or if story is important to you. Edit: I stand corrected, I just walked right into Verdant Brink via Silver Wastes (Past the SW outpost in a hole in the wall) on an 80 still doing its personal story. Not sure if its any different than your first visit, but the hero journal for the expansion should lead you on how to get wherever you need to go.

I probably would have contacted support without removing the item from the mail, this might actually be the first sign that some else's account got compromised and would help prevent it if there are more accounts in whatever the latest scam is. Responding back to the seller (whether by sending the item back, sending a message, etc) would be a red flag to let the person who actually hijacked the account know they've made an error and either stay clear of the account or to expedite the process of removing all the gold/gems/items before its locked down. Maybe its an error and the user intended to give it away, but 99% of the time its the former.

If I wasn't interested in the story at some level, I'm not even sure I'd even get started in the game despite knowing something further on (crafting/eco/raids/metas/PvP) was the peak spotlight of any MMO's focus. I am only willing to skip so much before I can turn around and find a game where I DON'T have to skip every cutscene or dialog option and still get what I'm looking for. There should never be any rush to "The endgame" unless you are planning to make content obsolete... and if your development team has put in hours (or years) of hard work to create that content, abandoning it 5 years later is just a waste of resources and personnel.

I stayed, only because its one of the few MMO's that seem to value world exploration and building a world that when I could fast travel, fly, or go on a fast mount... I actually have reasons to walk on the trail. That has disappeared because SotO is a flight heavy expansion (and I hate flying in ANY MMO)... and with Wizards Vault being more rewarding on the weekly scale than the daily I can take some of the time I would be grinding activities I enjoy doing to play some of the recent launches I COULD miss with other games while I wait for the rest of the third map so I can do the exploration and metas together as one as opposed to three disjointed but eventually united experiences. Also the world music is AAA, FFXIV has the best music but its generally raid or story focused while this I could vibe to an EoD meta or play through some of the HoT map metas and just have that casual satisfaction of doing the content with the community.

The only view I don't agree with. Your enjoyment of an MMO, or any video game, is not based on progress and the destination but the journey of your adventures while you played. I don't want to play a game that has 10-20 expansions, goes on for nearly 25 years and the population reaches a point the developer is going to pull the plug anyways. Look at FFXIV, its getting harder and harder to encourage people to start because its nearly 5 full expansions of content (ARR, HW, StB, ShB, EW, soon Dawn Trail) so make it 6 expansions of content to get "current" with the rest of the community. IF each Guild Wars has a ~10 year shelf life, before the developers get to do a full on upgrade and a fresh story start to let new players in... you are more likely to encourage new users than having to drag them through 10 years of content just to be with everyone else. Even with horizontal progression, the latest expansion is likely to draw players from the content of previous expansions while its the new shiny content until they finish everything and go back to content they enjoy doing.

Well I like the idea of a new game with a modern engine that the concept of a game lasting forever with endless expansions. I just hope they still make the world interesting to travel, don't destroy that world by allowing players to fly around the entire thing, and keep some integrity to the core fundamentals of Guild Wars. I'm just afraid the community who has number crunched the builds and restricted the satisfaction of discovery that is the modern era of gaming doesn't ruin this franchise like every other franchise of the past decade.

I do think that if people offer help, and that help is the Wiki there is a problem, but since the OP brought up skyscale nests/eggs I can say I spent 2-3 weeks trying to find the darn things AND I HAD FUN DOING IT. If I can't find something I just move on or come back another day or time. I also see this conversation is talking about things like Ascended gear, crafting, and potentially dragging into builds and other things and outside the fact that you want to craft something and have no idea if you need to "Discover or get the recipe from somewhere" Most of the issues is completionist VS enjoyment. When the joy of discovery is dead, so is my enjoyment of the game. People don't want THE ANSWER, but a little nudge here or there is perfectly fine and the community needs to accept that. That also means that the same players who get frustrated by things in the game eventually need to realize you don't have to do everything, or obtain the best things to find enjoyment in a game. IF you want a solo game, then go play something offline... but when the developers peg content on those who know everything, than they shouldn't have to scratch their heads when players avoid doing things.

Unless they have changed, most of the older content just list the name of the achievement that you are still eligible for. Future content was a bit more descriptive telling you the requirements for the achievement so you didn't have to look them up. IIRC it was EoD or PoF content that is when I noticed the switch over when I did the story missions my first time through.

Lets be honest, all Twitch drops do is bring the afk bots to streams for the free items, then they leave. The game gets LIMITED exposure for a week, Arenanet spends money on the advertising budget (I heard they do pay pretty well for streamers to play the game) and then in two weeks they don't really get anything at the end of it. Most of the new streamers don't come back, and most of the streamers who stuck with GW2 get free money for advertising the game to the same viewers who already watch them play it. If you are posting on this forum, chances are you don't need Twitch drops. Twitch drops helps get NEW players to try it by offering that free loot so when they get a drop they might walk into the store. It might offer a reminder "Hey look at me, I'm Guild Wars 2 and I'm still alive, come back" to bring a possible returning player back, but then you get the complaints about "Why can't I just skip the stupid Twitch site and give you $5 for it..."

The best I got out of this thread seems to be that the OP believes there are certain aspects of games that are enjoyed but are being ignored? Aspects that were populated, but as people left so did the experience of the game? Then made a bunch of comparisons talking about other games and how PvP was once a cherished mode that gets neglected so people leave and then those modes are empty. Then says that games are being tailored to single player experiences (not single player, but how social aspects are being pushed out so you can play a game on your own) and that it might be time to transition to a new engine with a new title (Guild Wars 3) and bring that experience to consoles. Then something about how ArcheAge 2 being a console MMO that will show that MMO's on consoles can be done (what about FFXIV?) I mean Final Fantasy XIV is the only MMO still relevant that is on consoles, and I think a majority of the Japanese player base is on console? Otherwise this is just another "MMO's are dead" disguised as broken English or an attempt to translate from another language. I'm not sure if this is a cry for PvP in MMO's to return or if they want MMO's on console (or both) but considering how many people probably opted out of PvP tracks in Wizards Vault, I can see why developers don't really focus on it anymore.

I would stick to official Arena Net partners, if anything happens on a 3rd party retailer that causes your key or the transaction in which your key was bought to be compromised... your entire account will likely be terminated. That security is worth far more than any savings from a shady site.