Hey, I’m 45…I’ve long since lost all sense of personal shame…so, whatever floats your boat is fine by me 
I’m really looking forward to playing this game. I’ve been looking forward to playing it since I preordered it from Amazon. I declined waiting the 400 hours it seemed it would take to download the client and skipped all of the pre-release events while I looked forward to receiving my disks. I looked forward to finally getting to play the game while I installed the game and during the entire 24 hours I’ve been waiting for it to download the updates. I awoke after a nap today (my husband woke me to help corral a wayward chicken) to see my download stuck at 99%, 3 files. After reading on a non-ArenaNet board that I should just restart the game and it will turn out to be at 100%, I did so, and now I am looking forward to playing it after it finishes the download of yet another update that apparently occurred while I was sleeping.
Ah, even as I typed the User Agreement popped up. I’ll think I’ll be on Northern Shiverpeaks as well because it sounds like home.
Here’s a tip: in your inventory window, there’s a gear symbol on the right upper corner. If you click that, one of the options is something like “stuff all applicable items into collections”. That removes all the tradeskill crap from your inventory and places them into some sort of pocket dimension where you can retrieve them at crafting stations with any character on your account. No more eggs and meat and ore and wood and carrots taking all the room!
Bah, Northern Shiverpeaks was full. I don’t even know where I ended up. They could have handled the server assignment better, I think. I’m underwhelmed by the graphics as well; the original GW was more pleasing to the eye. I’m having a hard time getting used to all of the other players running around, getting in my way, etc. Is there an etiquette manual for MMOs somewhere? I never know if I should jump in to help someone in a fight or just stay clear.
I think I’ll go spend a few hours reading the online (:mad:) manual before I invest too many hours in the game.
Well this thread got me interested, but the game is apparently Sold Out. Some of you might want to retract your “best launch ever” comments. Maybe I’ll look at again some day, but their Best Launch has turned this potential customer off completely for now.
As far as I know, if several people attack the same enemy, everybody gets full xp (though no idea how that “bonus xp” thing is calculated) and one of the attackers gets to loot it if it has any loot. Given how common the public quests are where you are supposed to kill things together to get it done, there’s a culture of everybody helping everybody. I’ve never had anybody complain when I’ve shot at their mob, though given how grumpy some MMO players are, I’m sure there’ll be a day when I found that guy who launches into a huge rant after I fling a fireball at his target.
I joined Suburban in the guild. But like Kestrel says, Northern Shiverpeaks is full, so no new players there or transfers in. Right now, there’s only three servers with less than High population: Eredon Terrace, Devona’s Rest, and Kaineng. Maybe it’s better to move the guild there?
Peanut Gallery, the launch is going well (I still think Rift’s was better), they just don’t have the hardware to take any more players right now. Holding off selling more accounts, that they couldn’t handle anyway, is shows some responsibility on their part. Retailers like Amazon might still be selling copies anyway.
I’m perfectly willing to move off of Northern Shiverpeaks if there’s another server that people will actually be able to get onto. It doesn’t make any difference as far as guild membership, but it would be nice for us to be on the same server for PvP.
As a pre-order, I’m happy they’ve closed down for new purchases until they can get more servers online. Right now it’s ridiculously full. (I’m in Gunnar’s Hold.)
As others have said, they stop selling for a reason. You can still get copies at Amazon or other brick-and-mortar stores.
I, for one, am happy they’re taking such steps so as not to overtax their servers to the point that nobody can play. I’ve seen absolutely no lag, even when I was on one of the busiest servers. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working, though not entirely flawless.
So, anybody have any tips for Elementalist story missions? They tend to spawn huge groups of enemies at close range with 2 of the mobs going to my allies and rest 8 attacking me, which tends to kill me in a few seconds if there’s ranged attackers in the mix or in a minute or two if they are all melee and I can run around a bit. Going to try to use a pet next time but I don’t think it can tank that many opponents.
As mentioned, I wasn’t allowed to set Northern Shiverpeaks as my home server, so I chose another where we have at least one member: Tarnished Coast. I am Raza the Elder on that server.
I picked up my physical copy Friday at a local Fry’s store, and there were only two copies left.
Loot determination is all personal. It’s possible 5 people get to loot the same mob, and you each get your own personal stash instead of splitting it up. The same is true of resource nodes and most world items you interact with/pick up for quests.
I generally stand way back with my elementalist if I think things are about to spawn. That way, they swarm my NPC buddies while I lay down some fire AoEs then swap to water to keep us all healed.
Actually, I do that with all my toons, heh. Getting swarmed is bad times.
That’s what I try to do and sometimes it works, but sometimes it seems they are scripted to attack the player and the NPC buddies only grab one each. It was especially bad in the last mission where I first had to talk to bad guy, then when that cutscene finished I had both melee and ranged enemies all around me. Died in few seconds even though I was the recommended level. It didn’t feel challenging, it just felt stupid.
Somewhat jaded old mmorpg player here. Guild Wars 2 didn’t seem that special until I played a while, tried different classes, and found a class that suddenly had me saying wheee this is fun (mesmer). Send in the clones! And there are a lot of neat nooks with surprises in the world. I also play a guardian and a ranger.
I’m enjoying it. It’s free form enough that you can pick it up and do whatever suits your mood any time. It’s easy to travel, there is no order to quest-type activities, and your level downwardly adjusts to wherever you are, so there’s no reason to get stuck in one area. I generally love open pvp, so I’m looking forward to jumping into that once I can tear myself away from exploring the pve world. It also feels like they tried to fix some of the irksome, grindy, and limiting aspects of mmo’s from over the years.
Don’t forget to hit that “V” key during battle. Dodging keeps you alive.
I’m currently on Ehmry Bay.
My experience so far is the elementalist battles are poorly designed for the class and you just end up suffering through them till you figure out what best works. It is very frustrating. Earth works surprisingly well in group fights but seems worthless elsewhere.
I’m lvl 57 on my elementalist so far and death running through a number of those was my experience.
I generally use a bull headed approach to leveling and never truly learn classes till max level in MMOs. I just use whatever seems to work, if something is too hard go back to it later. With the level reduction mechanic it hurt’s my ability to do that. With this one I’ve wanted to look up best practices but the amount of good GW2 wiki’s is a bit limited so I have nothing to reference.
Also, the lower level class quests the friendly nps’s die really easy and don’t respawn with you. As an elementalist you kinda need them. If you wipe you have no means to recover besides starting the whole instance over again.
It seems to be getting better but I’m not entertained with the elementalist class quests at all. I’m an experience MMO veteran that has played very competitively and I’m finding it ridiculous. I can’t imagine a newer player starting and even having a chance. If the goal is to chase off newb’s by frustrating them out of the game I think Arenanet is doing a great job.
A general question is can you have other people help in class quests?
Official wiki says:
“The story is played from one character’s perspective for that character’s story. Other players can help with another player’s story but are not able to make choices which affect the outcome, though they can choose to accept the outcome as their own.[1] The story instances scale with the number of players participating.[2][3]”
… so I guess you can, but that means more enemies. Might still make the fights easier if you can grab a good player who can either keep some of the enemies off you or kill them while they chase you.
Hmm, I’ve had some dicey fights on my elementalist during the personal quest (it’s not determined by class, btw – it’s determined by the personality/background choices you made during character creation), but I’ve so far managed to complete them at-level without dying (though often ending with health in the double digits, sometimes with a rally or two while downed). Here’s how my fights generally go:
Weapons: double daggers
Attunement: fire
Slot 6: Signet of Restoration (heals a small amount with each cast, including the auto-attacks, weak heal when activated approx ~15% health)
Slot 7: Signet of Fire - passive bonus to crit
Slot 8: Signet of Air - passive bonus to movement speed (10%)
Double-tap backwards dodge (evades the initial burst, get a little distance)
If there’s a corner or something else to LOS ranged enemies, get behind that, forcing them to run to you (and group up with the melee)
[4] Ring of Fire - they have to run through it to get to you, setting themselves on alight and starts a fire DoT
[1] Dragon’s Claw - starts the auto-attack, it’s a cone AoE
[3] Burning Speed - dash forward through the group of enemies, does massive damage to everyone you hit while doing so, leaves fire on the ground behind you causing them to burn with more DoT
[2] Drake’s Breath - cone AoE, channeled, can use while moving – just hitting this will auto-face you so no need to turn around manually
[5] Fire Grab - cone AoE, instant, does 150% damage against burning enemies (which they all should be), this also does massive damage
By now, everyone’s at less than 20% and if there’s 4 enemies or less I’m usually still above 50% health. Now I just circle-strafe to avoid the big charge-up melee hits while auto-attacking and hitting [2] or [3] as they come off cooldown. If I get downed at this point, somebody burns to death or just takes a couple hits to kill before I bite the dust, causing a rally.
Double-tap dodge in a safe direction as your endurance regenerates.
This is an incredibly destructive build for soloing, especially if you keep your daggers upgraded, but it takes a lot of awareness and quick dodging, as its range is very limited. I routinely mow through stuff 2-3 levels above me with that rotation/build. I keep a staff in my bags for long-distance nuking during group events.
Experiment with different weapons and builds until you find one that works well with your playstyle. It’s intended that you swap out skills and weapons depending on the situation (certain bosses aren’t meant to be engaged in melee, for instance, unless you like being 2-shot).
Oh, I forgot to mention, if you can’t LOS the ranged guys (or even if you can, this still might be easier), then double-tap dodge towards them through the melee who are running at you (you’ll evade the initial melee strikes if you time it right), and the melee thugs will group up nicely around the ranged guy that you’re now pummeling. Then you can proceed with AoE goodness.