Tips I've gathered from other players not in their exact words

[Katelynn.6593]

1. Don't use your healing skill near death. Try and use it at the point where it will top up your health pool.

2. Look at the tool tip of an enemy and slot your utility skills in that can counter that

3. Not every circle is scary

4. Don't dodge every attack you see.

5. Treat your utility skills as utility.

6. Some damage skills are more worthless than your AA

7. A defensive skill needs to be treated like a dodge unless you have no choice. If you wouldn't dodge that attack because it's not worth it, why would you block it? Blind it? Etc

8. People have won fights with only ten health remaining. It can be tempting to panic spam all of your defences simply because things have gone downhill but there is still a chance to win by the skin of your teeth. Remain calm no matter what your vitality status is

9. Don't forget your boons

10. Minimize danger. Can be as simple as stealthing yourself or fighting a few enemies at a time before going deeper into the enemy den, or skipping that part of your farming route because the time it takes to get through it safely is time that could be spent farming a lot more of the materials elsewhere.

11. A bit harder to learn but you know when your skills are off cool down without looking at the screen and you know your pressing the right button without looking at your keyboard.

12. Remember you have another weapon

[Seera.5916]

Add on for # 12. Unless you're an Elementalist. Then remember that you have other attunements.

Adding a few:

13. If you have poison and need to heal, see if you can wait until the poison comes off. Poison reduces the effectiveness of your heal. You'll heal more if you wait until it goes away. Of course, use your heal if it's use it or get downed.
14. It's ok to abandon a fight and let it reset and start again.
15. Know which skills you have that affect the Break Bar. Some enemies are designed to be super tough until you break their break bar and then they melt.
16. Know your limit, but occasionally test your limit. You won't improve unless you find yourself in situations where you have trouble. If you stay in easy areas you won't get better, or at least no where near as fast as if you went to an area that was more challenging.
17. Don't feel like you have to play the meta for your class. Know what it is the meta and then adjust to fit what's fun for you for solo play. Most builds are just fine for solo open world and personal story/living world story quests.
18. Don't rush your goals. What's the point of rushing to your goal only to get burnt out in the process?

[echosera.5497]

Here is a link to a guide that tells you which skills to use to break the break bar of a mob!https://reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/i6pl5c/the_guide/

[Hesione.9412]

Kiting in order to kill one NPC away from a mob isn't implemented that well. It can attack you and then start running back to where you kited it from, its health regening along the way whilst you suffer from its attack (poisoned, etc).

NPCs can be pulled onto you by another player (this can be by accident). For example, when node gathering another player may trigger an NPC who then follows them to the node. Aggro dump can occur, so that another player (you?) is attacked by that NPC.

Beware when another player has created a mob train. When they start running back to their point, if you are in the way then you are going to be attacked by all of them.

[Katelynn.6593]

@"Hesione.9412" said:

19. Kiting in order to kill one NPC away from a mob isn't implemented that well. It can attack you and then start running back to where you kited it from, its health regening along the way whilst you suffer from its attack (poisoned, etc).
20. NPCs can be pulled onto you by another player (this can be by accident). For example, when node gathering another player may trigger an NPC who then follows them to the node. Aggro dump can occur, so that another player (you?) is attacked by that NPC.
21. Beware when another player has created a mob train. When they start running back to their point, if you are in the way then you are going to be attacked by all of them.

Yep I've died because I was already low health to another mob and then they player brought more

[Deedrick.4372]

Line of sight is your friend. Use the terrain to your advantage if possible.

If you copy a build, try to understand the traits and skills. There is plenty to waste if you are not putting combos to use.

Learn to use combo fields, they are incredibly useful if used properly.

[Antycypator.9874]

I have more.

25. Pushing your buttons as fast as possible isn't necessary. It's best to play calmly.
26. That red bar under your skills is a "range indicator". Red line means your target is out of range.
27. Traits have very good synergy between other traits and skills.
28. One of the most important things about playing solo, is knowing and understanding mechanics. Learn what is dangerous, what can bring you down or CC you.
29. Move. Just move around your target. You will avoid some damage just by running.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Dont be afraid to group up to overcome adversity

[JekthAvid.1408]

You can sometimes right click on reward chests that appear on the right to get the rewards without opening the chest ui thing.

Don't be afraid to mess with keybinds

Dismounting gives you a (very) small upward boost.

Use the lfg tool!

[Hesione.9412]

Put your mastery points into Pact Commander ASAP. Advanced Logistics is required for autoloot. Supply Line Management, which you need to get along the way, lets you convert karma into cash. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pact_Supply_Network_Agent

Some skills start with two charges, and when you use one, it decreases the charge to 1. If you wait until that skill refills, you'll be back to 2 charges. Sometimes it is useful to continue having access to this skill. You can see which skills these are as they have a small 2 in the bottom right corner. There is a line that moves clockwise around the the outside of that skill square so you can see how it's refilling.

[Hesione.9412]

There are frequent, organised, hero point trains in HoT and PoF. These are a fun way to get your expansion-specific hero points, and the commanders ensure that people get all the waypoints along the way. Check in LFG. It is polite to tip the commander (I don't run these, so not a self-advertisement!).

Don't start a bounty if you are alone.

If you're having problems, e.g. you can't find a POI or you're wanting help with a specific hero point, call out in map chat. There are lots of helpful people in this game, who will assist you. There may be a time delay if they are in the middle of an event - for example, during the casino blitz/pinata event in Crystal Oasis is not a good time to start a bounty.

[Teratus.2859]

41. Survivability comes in many forms.. tanky stats, sustain mechanics or Boons, ranged game play, aggro manipulation via stealth etc.. find what works best for your class if you're struggling and see if you can work a bit of survivability into your build, this can often be done without needing to completely rebuild your character.

42. Mobility is a big part of this games combat system, try keybinding your major movement abilities such as jumps and dodges to easily accessable keys or buttons so you can comfortably use these abilities without needing to akwardly hit any keys or waste them through accidental misclicks. (Personally I like having dodge bound to my mouse ^^)

43. When you click on enemies sometimes they may have a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Purple ring around their portrait picture, this is often associated with an enemy rank such as Veteran, Elite, Champion or Legendary title but not always the case.These rings indicate a level of difficulty, no ring being the default normal easy enemy type, from bronze upwards enemies typically get stronger and tougher to kill.Veteran and Elite class enemies (Bronze and Silver) can be effected normally by Control and movement imparing skills aka Crowd Control or CC for short where as higher rank creatures like Champions and Legendary (Gold and Purple rings) will have break bars instead where those skills control effects will not longer effect them but rather damage that breakbar when used on them.

44. Events and Enemies will scale depending on how many players are in the local area with you, the more people that are around and participating in the fight the more health enemies tend to have and the more enemies can be spawned in as part of those events.. this can also result in higher level enemies such as veterans and elites also spawning as well, sometimes champions too.

45. You only need to complete 3 daily achievements a day to get free, easy gold (2 per day) and achievement points (10 per day upto a max of 15,000), these achievements can be done in all game modes, PvE, PvP and WvW and each game mode grants their own unique rewards associated with that game mode.PvE dailies reward Writs of Experience which can be saved and converted into Tomes of Knowledge, as well as some loot based on the content of the daily you completed.PvP dailies reward a Shard of Glory and potions of PvP reward that gives you 250 PvP experience points to your active reward track.WvW dailies rewards Bages of Honor and potions of WvW rewards that give you 250 WvW experience points to your active reward track.While you only need to complete 3 of any daily in any game mode to get the daily 2 gold and achievement points you can complete as many of them as you like for the other rewards as well if you choose to.

46. Certain loot containers such as the Bags of Loot you get while playing the personal story will have their contents scaled to you characters level.Sometimes it's best to open these bags on lower level or mid leveled characters so you can get large amounts of low/mid level weapon and armour items from them which can then be salvaged for low/mid tier crafting resources which are often times more expensive and harder to farm than the lowest and highest tier cratfing materials are.This is a good way to make some quick money as well as stock up on some harder to obtain materials for later use.

47. Don't neglect crafting diciplines, they can provide a lot of experience while you level up and become extremely useful later on for crafting ascended weapons and armour which you can only obtain through crafting, some achievement rewards and as pretty rare drops in the games harder group content like raids, world bosses and fractals.Crafting them is often your best choice when gearing up your character's weapons and armour as those ascended tier items cannot be bought or traded on the trading post.A number of ascended backpacks and most ascended trinkets however can be bought through special vendors for special currencies, such as laurels.Some ascended weapons and armour can be bought from a small number of vendors, but usually for heafty prices and requiring some currencies only found in certain game modes like raids and fractals.. so crafting is always going to be the easiest and best ways to obtain them unless you get a lucky drop :)

48. You can change the stats of Ascended weapons and armour through the mystc forge, so don't worry if you get lucky and find one that has a bad stat set for your character, keep it anyway and later on you can change those stats to suit your needs, however any upgrades like Sigils/Runes and Infusions will be lost during this process so make sure you remove them first with an upgrade extractor (available from the gemstore or via black lion statuettes) or at least the infusion extractor which you can by from a fractals vendor for 24 silver, the latter will only remove the infusion though not the rune/sigil.

49. Salvaging items automatically unlocks their skins in your account wardrobe if you do not already have them unlocked, so don't worry about salvaging things you might want to keep around just for the skin, salvage away ^^

[WorldofBay.8160]

you guys are missing a 31

31. never go afk next to a hero challenge. if the NPC turns aggro it has no clue who started the challenge and will attack either the closest player or the one with the most toughness in reach.

[Katelynn.6593]

@"WorldofBay.8160" said:you guys are missing a 31

31. never go afk next to a hero challenge. if the NPC turns aggro it has no clue who started the challenge and will attack either the closest player or the one with the most toughness in reach.

Never afk at a waypoint or a village with only greens in a map of yellows and reds. A random event could spawn! Afk in guild hall

[Eros.6801]

32. Know when and where to give up, learn to run away from a fight. Being dead and keep coming back only add up to your frustration.
33. Know your limits, ask for helps, save your time and effort.
34. Learn to listen and understand, play what you want to be and play what you have to be when time comes.
35. Learn to use gizmo, don't ignore NPC shop you don't know what they are selling. There is a whole lot of useful one out there will help to ease your journey.

(Fun tip : Know when and where to use Longbow #4 as a ranger ;) )

[Hesione.9412]

@"Eros.6801" said:

35. Learn to use gizmo, don't ignore NPC shop you don't know what they are selling. There is a whole lot of useful one out there will help to ease your journey.^^^ Yes! Particularly the portal rewinder from Sandswept Isles. That saved me when I was doing the Siren's Landing JP.

(Fun tip : Know when and where to use Longbow #4 as a ranger ;) )Hey, then I'll just blame the mesmers...

[JekthAvid.1408]

@WorldofBay.8160 said:you guys are missing a 31

Holy.... apparently I can't count xD

[Cuks.8241]

Line of sight. Use it to your advantage. Viable for both pvp and pve.

[iBhoot.4051]

Don't just follow meta builds. Pay attention to your way of playing/skills use. Gear your character gradually to notice what works and what does not. I use bersker as the baseline and then take it from there.

PvE. CC dps like GS is way overated. Scepter/Torch is best for engaging (Guardian) spirit sword for tagging. If you usually get jumped on, the dragonhunter is plain awesome. If your more always waiting already then firebrand is better fit. Longbow is so slow and low dps, Kudze owner so I kind spent enough time crafting/using the weapon do try and make it useful - wasted time. GS+scepter/torch very tough to beat as weapons.

Learn and I mean really learn GS defensive uses. Learn how do deflect/block inbound attacks using the GS.

Easy ascended WITH selectable stats, farm misborn motes and get karmic multiplier and farm Dragonfall meta + Bjora Marshes 2x meta's (including raven puzzles) for external iceshards. Its not boring - if your only into farming gold then thats a different mind set.

Most home nodes are a waste of money unless its for free or 15g max, 50g ones are all a waste.

External iceshards. Bjora Marshes 2x meta's, all ravens and and all the rest of the chests once a day should give you minimum 700-800 shards a day.

Do strike missions. You will be average the first few times, after that you will be set. 20mins for daily run.