Guild Wars 2: The One Thread

[Unholyground]

Just remember as a PSA to login at least once a week so once new living seasons start you get them for free. If not you have to pay 200 gems per episode after the fact.

I had to grind a lot of gold when I could have easily logged in once a week lol.

[Lotus Victoria]

Good work!
You just did Shaman's Rookery, one of the first JP's in the game. It can be a little annoying at first, but I'm glad you finished it!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Well it was pretty rewarding to get, mostly because I failed multiple times earlier though.

I also did the first 3 dungeons today. From what I understand there's no tanking and healing in the traditional sense right? As in there ain't a "trinity" in this game right?

There is a holy trinity but only in expansion raids. Raid bosses are the only mobs in the game that can be traditionally aggroed, as they go after whichever player has the highest toughness stat, meaning a tank can be designated by simply stacking as much toughness as possible. For all other PvE content, it's just DPS and healers, and all healers were AoE healers until EoD. EoD finally introduced a single target healing spec.

[Xilurm]

There's a novel that came out before GW2 that goes into them a lot more if you are curious. Forget the name, but I had the book ages ago.

Oh yeah, I see them. There's 3 novels surrounding the series. Maybe I'll get into them once I play the game for longer.

But people are usually pretty nice in GW2. If you lot folks know it's your first run or something they'll usually wait for you to enjoy cutscenes and gives some fight tips and whatnot.

Yeah, and I wasn't even the only one who was doing it the first time. One of the high levels explained stuff to us, was pretty nice.

- - - Updated - - -

Good work!
You just did Shaman's Rookery, one of the first JP's in the game. It can be a little annoying at first, but I'm glad you finished it!

Thanks! I also did the one in Snowden Drifts. King Jalis's Refuge I think. I found that more fun because of the pipes. Though it felt pretty short. I can't wait to get to some longer ones. Stuff like the Kugane Tower in FFXIV was pretty fun for me so I wouldn't mind long ones.

- - - Updated - - -

I also checked the outfits you can buy with gems and damn... I pretty much like almost all of them. They look so good. I remember back in the day when I was first playing WoW and saw the first Guild Wars I noticed that there were very little gear sets and most players looked the same. I was weird compared to how much stuff was in WoW but I guess that's because one was subscription based and the other was B2P. This is obviously way better now. I wonder how they're going to do GW3 if there's ever going to be one.

[Lex Icon]

there are some living world jp's that are really long. have checkpoints and everything.

[VMSmith]

There's no automatic queue in PVE for the most part. There's a few expections later on in the game called public instances but even then people generally prefer to use the LFG tool. Groups tend to fill fast as long as you say what you are doing in the description. So if you are doing say, Ascalonian Catacombs, the first dungeon, just make sure you write something like 'Story mode' in your description and people will be more inclined to join.

This is actually my main gripe with GW2. I'm not big on dungeons, raids, or really any group content ... but I would like to do a dungeon here and there. But, I don't understand how the LFG in the game works at all. I've never seen anything I'm looking for when I look at it and I typically have no idea where the dungeons are anyway so getting to them would be a pain. I just feel that the lack of an automated group finder is an annoyance solely for the sake of being annoying. And so, I don't do group content in GW2. This, in turn, leaves me a little less interested in playing since every other MMO I play lets me queue up.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I don't understand how the LFG in the game works at all.

You open up the LFG menu, and either click to join a group, or create your own and put in a description. Beware that if you are not a commander, then another player who has the commander tag can join your group and take control of it.

I've never seen anything I'm looking for when I look at it

You will see the LFG most active around server reset (when people are trying to complete their dailies) and primetime. People only really use the ingame LFG for organizing strikes, fractals, automated PvP tournaments, or a few select meta events (Silverwastes, HoT metas, Dragonfall, Drizzlewood, and EoD metas, except for Dragon's End). Hardly anyone runs dungeons unless it's for a particular rune. Otherwise, most GW2 group organizing happens outside of the game in Discords. If you want to join groups for WvW, raids, CM strikes, PvP, and Dragon's End, then you should check out Hardstuck and the United Arts of Tyria Discords.

I just feel that the lack of an automated group finder is an annoyance solely for the sake of being annoying.

A group finder for instanced PvE content? Fractals, raids, and strikes? It could work but the devs would need to design it around the way people actually organize their groups. We live in a boon meta where groups organize around having all boons provided (quickness and alacrity being the most important of all). In addition to players needing to select whether they are queuing as DPS or healer (or tank for raids), they would also need to select which boons they are providing for the matchmaker.

[VMSmith]

Yep, everything you just listed is exactly why I don't get the LFG tool (I'm guessing from what you said that dungeons rarely pop up in it) and don't really have an interest in group content in games like GW2. There's just too much meta-gaming and required knowledge that I'm no longer interested in learning for the sake of putzing around in a videogame. I honestly have no clue what boons are and no desire to learn, so if they're required to run a dungeon then I won't ever be running a dungeon.

If I can't pop into a piece of content without studying online and looking at outside sources to apply for positions in the content then it might as well not exist, for me.

Just reading this I'm starting to think I'm wasting my time with GW2 and should spend more time in STO, SWTOR and Fortnite ... all of which just let me play the game.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

If I can't pop into a piece of content without studying online and looking at outside sources to apply for positions in the content then it might as well not exist, for me.

That's why I don't do raids. I dislike spending hours reading boss guides and I hate the commitment/obligations when it comes to being a part of a team. Normal difficulty strikes are pretty easy to PUG, though. On Mondays I just log in at reset or primetime, join a strike PUG, say in squad chat "I can provide DPS or Alacrity DPS", the PUG leader tells me to switch to my DPS or Alac DPS spec, and then we go and kill the boss. Twenty minutes later I have done all of EoD strikes for the week. Never had to look up boss mechanics.

[Lotus Victoria]

Timegating fishes was the worst idea ANet had during EoD. Fishing is actually one of the most relaxing and profitable activities I've ever played in an MMO, but having to get specific fishes during dawn/dusk is so frustrating.

[PACOX]

Wait until you want to catch fish only available at dusk or dawn.

Doubt they will change it because there's actually a decent amount of people who love fishing and the soft restrictions allow those people to have a decent niche within the economy. Lots of gold in fishing if that's your thing.

[Xilurm]

This arrived way faster than I expected it would.

Edit: I see people talking about P1, P2 etc which are paths in dungeons but I only ever noticed one way when inside. Do you get to choose from multiple maps or something?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Edit: I see people talking about P1, P2 etc which are paths in dungeons but I only ever noticed one way when inside. Do you get to choose from multiple maps or something?

If you do story mode there is only one path. If you are farming on explorable mode then you can pick one of three paths to go down.

[Xilurm]

If you do story mode there is only one path. If you are farming on explorable mode then you can pick one of three paths to go down.

Oh fair enough. Huh, this reminds me of the new criterion dungeons they added in FFXIV.

[PACOX]

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/bjKaz55.png[/IG]

This arrived way faster than I expected it would.

Edit: I see people talking about P1, P2 etc which are paths in dungeons but I only ever noticed one way when inside. Do you get to choose from multiple maps or something?

Story mode is as it sounds, the version of the dungeon related to the story (dungeons aren't required to understand the story but they do add some additional context).


Exploration mode are addition scenarios within a dungeon that open up after you do story mode. You don't have to story mode to run them but you need someone else to start the instance for you. They are scale 5 levels above their respective story mode but some can actually be considerably harder than the story instance if you go in with a bunch of fresh people even if they are level 80. There's about 3 exploration modes to a dungeon with their own little story - they drop dungeon currency (back in the day dungeons had their currency per instance but they've all been unified). Exploration stories are even less relevant to the plot but provide some world building.

[Xilurm]

Mount Maelstrom's northern part of the zone is really beautiful, especially at night.

[Edge-]

Man, you're making me want to run some dungeons again and check out a bunch of the ones I missed.

[Xilurm]

I just reached level 80. Going to finish the "my story" questline (i assume it ends cause the living world stuff is after?)tomorrow and do the last two dungeons.

About the Living World seasons, I read that they brought them back recently? Does that mean they were unavailable for everyone for a period of time?

[Edge-]

About the Living World seasons, I read that they brought them back recently? Does that mean they were unavailable for everyone for a period of time?

They brought back S1 which you should have full access to. That season was never replayable to begin with so if you missed it it was "gone" until this expansion.

Other seasons all need to be purchased if you missed them (which you did), though they're not too expensive given that they're about a couple of bucks each and come with an hour or two of story missions and then usually a whole zone per-episode. They don't really give them out for free often, but there are semi-frequent sales that you can take advantage of.

I assume S5 (? I guess?) will be releasing next year, all you need to do to get new episodes of the LS is to log in while that episode is active (usually a few months) and you'll have it permanently added to your account.

[Xilurm]

That's fair. With how it was worded I assumed that most seasons were completely gone, the same way Bungie vaults their old stuff in D2. I guess now that they brought back the first one it was a good time to start the game too, I can just go straight to that.