Dammit.
There are very few support-only abilities, and the ones that do exist are on a fairly long cooldown. You’ll find in a support role most abilities are dual-purposed, buffing your allies while debuffing or damaging enemies. I’ve specialized in support with my engineer and still end up receiving kill credit for almost everything as well as gold medals. Making everyone around you more effective also greatly increases the speed at which events are done and chances of success (particularly important when there’s just a few of you vs a champion, for instance). It’s also invaluable in WvWvW.
I would advise players to not spend all their skill points on skills. There are items that are needed for crafting a legendary weapon that need to be bought will skill points.
There may be enough to unlock all skills and still have enough for a legendary but I don’t think I am going to chance it.
You keep gaining skill points at 80 every time you would theoretically ding 81. The WvWvW map explorations also reset every time you get matched up against new servers, so I think those skill challenges can be repeated then. Also, I’ve heard people exult about being awarded up to 30 skill points for completing jumping puzzles (the Eternal Battlegrounds one, at least). I did it at level 45 and didn’t get any, so it may just be a max-level thing, but those puzzles can also be repeated (daily?).
The one in EB, which I have not yet completed can be redone daily. I don’t think you get anything other than siege weapon blueprints, but I am probably wrong.
I just did the maze/ jumping puzzle in Sharkmaw Caverns in LA. It took about an hour for me but it was fun, a bit frustrating at times but a well done little piece.
Ok, I now see that there are a whole bunch of those sorts of puzzles in the game. Under the explorer tab I see that I have done something like 4 or 5 out of 20 or so…This game will keep me occupied for a long, long time.
Just so you know, at the last boss of Twilight Arbor, don’t stand on the branch that’s sticking from the wall – the adds spawned up there and two of them were invulnerable since they were melee and could not reach us. Took us maybe 30 min to slowly figure out how to get them dead.
Dinged 80 from dungeon complete xp after that, though, so it wasn’t a total waste. 
Thanks! Just explainig that the skills come from the weapon I am holding alone helped me understand things so much better. The rest was just gravy! 
For those of you on Tarnished Coast, looks like we have a good matchup this week in WvWvW. Sea of Sorrows has a healthy Oceanic population, which means they spring ahead every night, and we just barely retake the lead during the day. We’ve traded first and second place with them several times over the weekend, and we have some good commanders in the field. A few hours in there netted me about 4 levels, over 10k karma, and a good deal of cash. Check it out if you get the chance!
You keep gaining exp at 80 and every time the bar fills you get a skill point.
I find the game frustrating.
I’m doing a human elementalist, noble background, and it seems like death is always right around the corner; gauging a fair fight is perpetually a roll of the dice.
Right now I’m level 10 and stuck on the personal quest bit where you fight the guy at his trial (not at all stolen from Game of Thrones.) Him and his buddy wreck me and my second with ridiculous ease; I get that I have to kill his buddy first, but we can’t dent him.
I tried it first at level 8 and died. So I went and picked up a few levels, went back, and died faster.
I didn’t have much trouble with that fight, but I was playing a warrior. Things that might help are upgrading your weapon (they don’t cost that many coppers on the Trading Post), picking Logan as your second and running away a lot so they can’t melee you. I can’t remember what elemental stances you have unlocked at lvl 10, but if you have water it has some healing stuff. Just concentrate more on staying alive than actually doing damage and you should be able to succeed.
But yeah, as a squishie a lot of the personal story fights can be hard, especially if the enemies decide to all attack you. I had a lot of trouble on my Elementalist as well.
Rick, I have found so far that the elementalist is really squishy. Again weapon swapping is a must. You can use water magic to slow enemies- earth magic as well. You can blind with air magic - good when taking on melee, and you just do straight up massive damage with fire.
If you are having trouble, PM me and I’ll help you out. Same goes for anyone here. As long as I’m not in a dungeon or something, I’m happy to help.
Also I am not sure gaining levels and going back will help because it seems you get shifted down to whatever level the quest is anyway.
I’ve often wondered how this works exactly, since the lower level stuff is a lot easier if my lvl 80 warrior gets shifted down to that level than when I’m doing it with my level-appropriate characters. All my trait bonuses seem to still work for example, which alone helps a lot.
Yes, and your weapon damage is higher as well. I pushed my necro to hit 80 as fast as he could. I didn’t map out the lower level area- I went for the 75-80 areas as fast as I could. I am now going back to complete the maps and the monetary rewards are greater for a higher level character than they are for a lower level one. You still get weapons and materials based on the level of the area, but more cash for sure. Also, you get more money and karma for events in the lower areas as a level 80.
Can I get a guild invite for my guardian, his name is Twentypeople
I’ll shoot one out when I get home this evening if someone hasn’t beaten me to it.
There’s a pretty big thread on the official forums about how retarded the difficulty of the personal quests are. They’re slowly adjusting down the difficulty of individual bits of it here and there. Personally, I don’t think you’re missing out on a whole lot if you come back to them later. Some of the rewards are useful at any level, and gearing is pretty easy without those rewards anyway.
Rewards weren’t that great, but I liked the lore aspect of it. The dungeons are part of the same lore, and later on Orr is explained through the story quests. I actually got really tired of the plant elf Marshall blathering on and on, and in general I felt the emotional impact of the “personal” stories was close to zero compared to SWTOR, but I still found them a good way to learn about the world.
I think whoever designed the personal quests was playing a warrior. As a warrior they are between easy and nicely challenging instead of frustrating. Then I switch to my necro and have to run around for minutes to survive a single trash wave because they all want to kill me.