New player getting frustrated with not getting this game: Need Advice

I am still trying to wrap my around this game and I love what I "SEE" but in practice it kinda falls apart for me.


I have had my account for 4 years and never topped level 8. I think at first I tried to approach it like World of Warcraft or Everquest 1 and I know that this game does not play like that. I try to tell my friends that also that scoff at me for playing Guild Wars.

I know the mechanics are totally different, and I know that grouping is not the same.

However, I just cannot fit into this game. I have tried everything and I guess I just dont get how to play it. I don't like my class and I guess what I am looking for is a beefy warrior type or some melee DPS.

However whenever I fight with my warrior who is level 5 it seems like I just spend a lot of time chasing mobs around that dont focus on me and attack everyone else.

What is the goal of this game? Do most people simply level fast to 20 and farm Eye of The North? Am I just too much of an MMO explorer to see that this game may not fit my style?

I have all 3 expansions and never finished any of them and it seems whenever I get back into it I putter out and cannot level fast enough.

I dont understand the roles of most the characters either. I have studied my butt off and I just dont get it.

For example my current level 8 is a Paragon. I have him spec'd what I think is DPS with spears. I go out and hire henchmen and use Koss to tank.

But Koss doesnt really tank. I try to send him in to attack and he takes a while to react and the mobs just run all over and attack my healer and all I do is chuck spears and occasionally buff with the fire anthem.

If a target gets on me I usually get owned.

So I try a melee character and still get killed as well.

I guess what I am saying is I just dont get grouping in this game and need some advice. Usually I take a healer, Koss and some random DPS henchmen because I hear they take loot and I dont want too many with me.

I can only get 4 total henchmen and my Paragon is ranged. So the attackers go in and I just chuck spears at whatever Koss is attacking.

However, I have trouble seeing what debuffs are on MOBS because all it has is a down arrow. There seems to be no agro control at all. I guess I am not really sure how to play this game

Is the goal to solo? I have never talked to another human being in this game so what is everyone doing? solo'ing to 20?

How do people do their quests? By this I mean as a new player should I ignore collectors? Should I blow through everything and only do Primary Story Line? When you go out questing how do you form your party?

How do you fight? By this I mean what is the basic sequence of attack? Also I do not understand Chants, Lyrics and other Songs because the descriptions are pretty vague. I can only have 8 skills, so if i DUAL CLASS I run out of skills really fast. What I wanted was a DPS spec'd Paragon. If I take my rez signet that leaves me with 7 abilities. Should I even bother playing support if I solo with henchmen all the time? I would find that boring.

How can I get Koss to attack FIRST without me attacking?

I have set my clicking to double click to attack and loot. At first the single click was killing me because I like to inspect my targets before combat.

Am I making this game harder than it should be? I seem to die a lot because my healer gets mobbed. What is my role as a paragon? Pretty much every battle I just sit in back and throw spears and do an occasional buff.


I think I am a little lost at the mechanics of this game and I am getting very frustrated. I like to explore and see all the areas but I know that this game right now is all about "cheating" and power leveling to 20 and ignoring everything

Maybe this just isnt the game for me?

Biggest problem with what you're doing right there. Unless you're solo farming (which there's maybe one Paragon farming build, sorry) you want to fill out your party with as many people as you can. The game was designed so that unless you have a max party it should be more difficult. Also, the loot you'd be getting is so unbelievably crappy that there is absolutely no point in running alone right now.

As far as playing a Paragon and understanding what they do, I would like to refer you to Snow Bunny's amazing Paragon guide. It gives you a description of basically what you should be doing, how you should be doing it, and which skills are worth using.

Just for the record, Koss should not be tanking, he should be raping face with damage. The best form of aggro control in this game is death.

I'll be online in roughly two hours from this post; if you are feel free to drop me a line, my IGN is off to the left. I'll be glad to run around with you a while and try to explain some things.

Edit: I apologize for being a douche, but my guildies are needing me to do something else with them when I get on so I won't be free. My apologies.

Ah got ya.

Will I ever be able to take more than 4 total out in a party?

Also Koss doesn't do much of anything but die a lot.

I have him with a sword I crafted and a shield and he has nothing but melee attacks and I ditched his defense buffs so that he should be doing nothing but crits, power attacks, bleeds and fury attacks.

Is my weapon choice for him wrong? I spec'd him in swords and strength. Should I give him a hammer? he also has a nice axe i could spec him in.

But as for the basics of combat I don't think I am getting it at all. Did I pick the wrong class?

What if I want to get in there and fight and do DPS? Do I NEED a secondary class? I don't have enough action bar slots to really take advantage of it

This game is completly different to WoW and most other mmo's.

Tank and Spank has to be one of the slowest method's to play the game and is deffinatly not the most efficient. What you want you koss to be doing is pumping out massive dps with an axe, if you have the skills available (also be warned melee heroes really arent that great, because they tend to get caught up on enemies)

You should really be taking a full team of hench, because the loot is really nothing at this point in the game. Your pretty much gimping yourself and for no real gain.

Paragons can be used for either DPS or party support. They can dish out a similar DPS as a warrior except its at range. Later on in the game as you start unlocking more skills you might find yourself needing to run party support more often, especially in HM as the enemies can start hitting fairly hard and running as an IMBAgon can pretty much nullify most damage (they can reduce partywide damage by about 87% or something like that).

Just remember you can change your build and setup in every outpost! Dont be afraid to mix skills up and find builds that work for you (theres no penalty for respec'ing unlike WoW!)

Hope this helps a little

Edit: just a quick note things might be a little difficult at this point in the game because of the limited amount of skills availble, what you should work on is getting better armour and unlocking all the skills availble using hero skill trainers and normal trainers. This way you can be prepared for most situations. PM me in game if you need any help. IGN Elayne Clayr

guild wars is a game with some pve to let you get nice weapon/armor skins and pvp to beat other people in fair, organized formats (gvg) while showing off your chaos gloves so everyone knows who the alpha male is.
if you're playing guild wars like WoW you're not going to appreciate it. you might think you only initially tried to play it like WoW and stopped doing so but your post indicates that you still treat guild wars like a pve-focused (mmo)rpg.
tl;dr: if you're not going to GvG you shouldn't play guild wars. the pve is pretty terrible for an online rpg.

Few things you need to learn, and to learn them, you need to either read EXTENSIVELY, or learn from experience in the game.

1) how to make a good build - this is a combination of damage, self healing, utility (speed boost, snare, conditions, etc.), and synergy
2) how to take appropriate team members - do the heroes+hench you are using work well together? Do you have enough team healing, damage, etc.?
3) how aggro works - this is a hard one to learn fast, but PvE rarely changes, so once you learn, it is done. This is a matter of which enemy to attack first, which class to initiate the aggro, how to snare if snares are needed, how to kite, etc., etc.
4) hero+henchmen AI - the intelligence of the heroes and hench is not the best, and some classes/builds do extremely good, while some do extremely bad. Knowing which will work and which will fail makes life easier.
5) monster skills - knowing what the monsters you are fighting use makes it easier to counter them. If you go into a group of monsters that can spam blind and weakness and your team consists of warriors and paragons for damage, you need serious condition removal. If you know that you will face that, you can set your team and builds up to deal with it.

You're in luck. All of the hand to hand fighter classes in Guild Wars specialize in damage output. Warrior, Assassin, and Dervish are all good at that, and while Paragon isn't really close range, they put out solid dps as well.

That's part of the game. Tanking isn't really very useful in Guild Wars. Enemies sometimes go after you're weaker teammates, just like a real player would. The best way to deal with it is not to attempt to draw them on to you, but to kill them as quickly as possible so they can't do any more damage.

It's hard to pin a specific goal to the game, but endlessly farming for experience and items is not it. The way items work in Guild Wars is that it is easy to quickly acquire top-tier items so you're on an even playing field with other players. There are rare items that can be farmed if that's your thing, but they only look nicer than generic top-tier items, they aren't actually any more effective. You can still make a lot of money selling them because people like the prestige.

If you want some suggestions for a goal of the game, I think a good starting point would be to play through the story of one of the campaigns like you would in a single player rpg. After doing that you'll be level 20 and should have enough skills and equipment to take on everything else.

A lot of players make player versus player battles their endgame. Alliance battles and the random arenas are probably the least organized, and thus easiest to get into forms of pvp.

If you don't like pvp you can clear the other campaigns, you can max out your titles (which can be a significant time investment depending on how far you want to take it), you can try to get all the skills for your character, you can try to beat the elite pvp areas like the underworld.

Really there's a lot to do, and the game mostly leaves what to do up to you.

You level up the fastest in factions, then nightfall, and then prophecies is the slowest. It's still much faster than the overwhelming majority of online rpgs though. Be sure to do missions and quests and follow the storyline instead of grinding enemies, as the latter is not going to be very effective.

The roles of the classes are pretty flexible, really, and almost any class can be made into a damage dealer or a support class or fill any other number of roles. Certain classes are better at some jobs than others, of course, but it shouldn't be too much of a concern in normal mode pve.

For example my current level 8 is a Paragon. I have him spec'd what I think is DPS with spears. I go out and hire henchmen and use Koss to tank.

Are you giving Koss a set of skills to help him fight? Koss is a hero, which means they're a non-player teammate who you equip with skills. If you send him in without doing that, he'll be heavily unprepared for the enemies you come up against. Push 'k' to open your skills window where you can change your skills, then click on Koss' face at the top to setup his skills.

Don't forget about attributes! Koss won't do any damage with his sword unless he has points in swordsmanship, and likewise your paragon won't hurt very much without spear mastery. You can hover the mouse over the name of any attribute to get a description of what benefit it provides. There's no worry about making the wrong choice because in town you can remove and replace any and all skills and all the attribute points you have as much as you like.

You don't want to do this. Other players, as well as npc teammates do take a share of the loot, but you are still far better off travelling with a full team. You will get more loot with a full team because even though they take some of it, you'll be killing much faster and winning most of your battles. Besides, you don't need to worry too much about loot in Guild Wars, at least not before level 20.

On your minimap in the corner, there's a circle around your location. If you get close enough to an enemy that they are inside that circle, they're close enough to you that you'll draw their aggro. That's really the extent of it. There are no aggro control skills in the game because all those do is intentionally dumb down the ai, and in addition to that, any and all of those abilities would be completely useless against a human opponent.

Guild wars is much easier than most online rpgs to solo in. I would personally recommend getting other players to help as it will make learning the game go faster and I think it will be more fun too. Please note that by soloing I mean playing without any human teammates rather than playing with only your character. Playing alone without any other players, heroes, or henchmen will be nearly impossible without using very specific builds.

Do it however you like, if you think you're underlevelled for an area, stop and do a few sidequests. I would recommend ignoring collectors until they start offering perfect equipment. It's just a waste of time before that.

If the chants system seems complicated, it might be best to play as something like a warrior for now. They have good damage output, the best armor in the game, and they're both useful in any situation and not too complicated to understand.

I would probably not dual class too much to start out. You won't have enough attribute points to spend on both classes, so just save it for later, and use your second class to provide a little utility or something instead (like a resurrect spell or a condition cure as a warrior/monk, for example).

Push the tab button on your keyboard to cycle through all the enemy targets and look at them all without attacking them. If you click on someone on accident and you don't want to attack them, you can cancel it by either moving with wasd, or by clicking somewhere else.

That's about it. The paragon does heavy damage with their spears, and they have a large variety of party-wide buffs they can use to help out their teammates.

Guild Wars is probably less about power levelling than any other online rpg on the market. Take it easy, do what you want to do instead of worrying about your long term progress. It will come on its own, and it will come much faster than you think.

If exploration is what you want to do, Guild Wars is a great game for it. You just need to get the play and party mechanics down first so you don't wipe.

If you'd like, I could join you as a monk I've been levelling in Nightfall and help you out sometime.

As for making Koss attack first you will need to flag him. Below your Compass you will see up to 4 small flags. By hovering mouse over them you can see the description of what they do. Click the one that says "Order Koss" , your cursor turns into a flag. Place the flag near the enemies and Koss will go there and start fighting. With some training you can learn to place it so that he isnt out of range of your monk's healing and your own spear.
For leveling I strongly advice to take all kinds of quests, in Nightfall and Factions you get good xp for reward, ie helps you leveling fast. Some are real easy, some are harder, and unless it is a Primary Quest you can just skip it if you fail hard.

Many great responses thanks!

Yeah I have Koss equipped as a DPS build. He has an axe, nothing but Axe and attack abilities, the FRENZY shout, and a rez and heal signet. I have spent his points in Axe and Strength.

I try to order Koss via the flags but I think I was trying to get him to click ON a certain target (usually caster mobs) instead of sending him in.

I will take this advice and run with it.

Also would people recommend traveling between expansions at level 10?

I always wanted a Warrior/Assassin but wasnt sure if I had to use daggers for the secondary

Yes, in later stages of the game you will have max groups of 6 and 8

Try using flags to control him and place him where you want him. Also you can change him from attack mode to guard mode to peace mode. Guard mode works the best.

There is no such thing as a wrong class. You just need to know what each class is about and the best uses for them. Tactics will be one of the main things you should concentrate on.

Warriors are good for aggroing and holding the enemy. Defense buffs are needed to reduce damage to you and your party. Once the warrior has hold of the group your ranged professions can finish them off with a minimal amount of damage.

Paragaons can be used this way but there are a lot of shouts that buff the parties defenses and attacks that will help you and your party win through.

Monks are best for healing or increasing defenses. Many of the enchants can be applied to a warrior before running into the group. Smiting has become popular now with changes for Ray of judgment. Though that is elite and only available later in the game.

Ritualists can heal add some party buffs and do some large damage. A combination of these can be used effectively in your skill bar.

Assassins used properly are a great combat character. One should look for the weak targets strike quickly and run away

Necros can cause lots of damage controlling minions and useing curses to effect a group of enemies. Also a necro can support casters and healers my providing energy to them.

Mesmers are harder to use than most characters but it is effective for energy drain interrupts and combined with ele as a secondary they can cast the slowest spell in less than half the speed.

Rangers are great for pulling groups away from a large horde of groups allowing you to fight smaller numbers. Interupts are good and spirits give enviroment bonuses.

Elementalist provide massive damage and can help slow down a mob when you need a tacticle retreat.

Dervishs have both nice close combat and aoe skills that can be used effectivly.

For know I would concentrate on one character. Also try to do all the quests in between missions rather than going form one mission to the other. This will help you level and enjoy the PVE aspect of the game. Don't let people foll you into thinking GVG is the only good thing about GW. PVE is good and is even better if you have a group of real players to help you. Joining a good guild can do wonders for your playing experience.

Oh pick up all the skills you can. This will help you alot

well not getting past level 8 was your problem, the game REALLY shines after you hit maz level and get to go do some real exploring and get some real fun build together.

gl and hf

What you should do is attempt to join an understanding and very social guild. it will make the game experience much more fun, and they will be able to help u out whenever u get into a tight spot. Best way to learn is to learn with others ;-)

Hudson;

The game is called GUILD WARS. Join a guild, any decent guild will be able to help you on your way. It sounds like you are not following the quests or missions. One of the things I have found in this game is how helpful people are. I hope you try and continue on your path, and get above level 8, and reach the more interesting areas of quests and missions.

HEY HUDSON LISTEN TO ME

This is the run down of the game:
Pick a class any class then do quests. It only takes me around 4 hours to get to level 12 if I were to pick a new class. The pattern of the game is too hench until your level 20 and have good skills to not have so much henchmen to get more loot.

And like Alaron said its called guild wars for a reason. Oh yeah, it sounds to me that you read too much into the game information which would mean that your assuming that the information that is presented to you means its reliable in your case. That is not the case

Frenzy. That's probably why your Koss keeps dieing. While Koss is in the stance Frenzy, he will take double the damage he normally would. If he was a human player, this wouldn't be too bad, but unfortunately the Hero AI tends to spam Frenzy. Also, Heal Signet gives Koss -40 armor while using it, which is equivalent to taking double damage. Since he will use it even while getting attacked, it will often be counter productive. And even worse is when he uses both of them together while being attacked, which may as well be a death wish.

I think for now just removing Heal Signet and Frenzy from Koss' bar will give you a very large improvement in his survivability.

Crap I never thought of this. That may be it. I didnt think he would spam the healing signet if I had a healer in my party.

I think after looking over some Paragon builds and understanding the system better I have a build I want to try and will focus on DPS. Right now I use Anthem of Flame to get a chant up and buff the party with Burning then throw on my Signet of Aggression (and requires a chant) which gives me endurance and I start to throw spears.

I need to buy more skills methinks.

My Paragon's name is Gallus Largo. I added my info to the left, thanks all

Hey Hudson right on the top of the page you will see a tab called skills. Go in it and it has great filters to what type of skills you are looking into.

The mobs do have a tendency to focus on the weaker players and healers first, and sometimes it's not possible to pull agro. The best thing to do is kill it before it can take down your healer. When I play warrior I focus on the mobs that are beating on the spell casters first, especially if that spell caster is my healer.

That really depends. Some people play PvE just to unlock skills and such for PvP. I'm not really a PvP fan, and don't really feel like being called a noob all the time while I try to figure it out, so I do the majority of my playing in PvE. I've done all the campaigns on my main, now I usually focus on titles, or dungeon running, or amassing a large collection of elite armor. :P

Right now I would recommend just running the campaign your character originated in, doing all the quests, getting your character past level eight. Once you've done that you can do the other campaigns, or give PvP a try.

You don't really need to level fast. My first character was a Prophecies character, and it took me ages to get her to lvl 20, but my lvl was never too low that I couldn't handle what ever area I was in at the time. Again, just focus on the storyline and side quests and I think you'll find the game a lot more enjoyable.

Koss won't attack unless you have him set to gaurd and send him into a mob, or if you attack something first. Usually the hero AI will focus on whatever you're attacking, which is a good thing, because mobs die faster when everyone is focusing on it. For example, if you're dead, the hero/hench will just go about attacking random crap, and you usually just get to sit there watching them beat on stuff while hardly ever taking anything down and shouting at your healer to just rez you already.


I know everyone else has already said it, but ALWAYS take a full party with you. The loot is scaled so you would get as much as you would with a party full of humans, but if you're dead all the time it's really not going to matter how much is dropping.

Also, I've never had to worry about money for armor or weapons at lower lvls. When I get to an outpost with higher AC and armor I've always got enough money, and usually enough mats to get it. That's another area where GW is different from WoW, max armor and weapons are easy to get at lvl 20 (or even before), and they don't cost a lot. Most elite armor sets aren't even that difficult to get.

Actually you can see what type of debuff a mob has by looking at their bar, even if you can't see exactly which skill caused it. A brown down arrow means some sort of condition like blind or weakness, a pinkish/red bar means they're bleeding, a bright pink bar means they've got a degen, a green bar means they've been poisoned or diseased, a pink down arrow means they've been cursed or hexed, and a gray bar means they have a deep wound and they're max hit points have been lowered. Also, if a mob has been blinded, it looks like they've got dirt spilling out of their eyes, if they're bleeding you can see the blood spray, etc.

I wouldn't say it's the specific goal of the game. They've got it set up so that you can play by yourself with heros/hench, or with a group of humans. Grouping isn't as popular as it used to be, however, so if you want to play with other humans your best bet is to join a guild.

Personally, when I'm running a campaign I do the primary quests, side quests, and do the missions. You lvl up a lot faster that way, and the quests usually have monetary rewards, in Prophecies you can get a lot of skills for free by doing the side quests, and in Factions and Nightfall you get things like battle commendations, which you can turn in for things like identification and salvage kits, keys, etc.

As for forming a party, unless I'm doing a mish where I might need a specialized party (lots of interrupts, etc), I usually have a standard build that consists of a hero warrior, a hero prot. monk, and a minion master. Then I take a hench ele, hench warrior, hench healer, and whoever else I feel like dragging along at the time. In some areas, however, a MM is useless, in that case I either spec my necro to do something else, or I take along one of my Ele hero's.

That gets me through most areas, however, if you keep getting your ass handed to you, it's best to know why so you can change up your skills, heros skills, and take different hench to better deal with it.


Probably. I see that you're taking along mostly attack skills on yourself and your warrior hero, which seems like it would be be a good thing. The more attacks you can do the better, right? But I find it helpful to take along at least one defensive skill to take some pressure off your healer. They've got a limited amount of energy and an entire party to keep alive.

For some people it is, but it's not necessary. Power leveling is NOT a requirement, and you can quite easily play through the game without having to worry about your lvl if you go through it like you're meant to. I will admit that the lower levels kind of suck because you don't have as many skills to choose from, but once you leave the noob island (and you should be lvl 20, or darn close to by the time that happens), it's much more fun. The starting areas are meant to be just that, starting areas so that you can figure out what you're doing.

Multi quote didn't work for me, for some reason, but you'd asked in a later post if you need a secondary profession and if it's worth going continent hopping at lvl 10 because you were interested in playing a warrior/assassin...

You don't need to use your secondary profession, but you need to have one. I'm not quite sure how it works in Factions and Nightfall, but in Proph. you can't even take your characters over the wall unless you have a secondary profession.

I don't really think that it's worth using at lower levels because you don't have the ability points to go around, or a lot of skill points to be going out and buying a lot of skills.

At first you can only take a secondary campaign from the professions available in the campaign you're playing in. However, later on you'll be able to switch your secondary profession to anything you like, and then you can change to W/A. In nightfall you can do this after completing the "Hunted" primary quest (the one you get right after completing the Consulate Docks mission), in Factions it's after doing the Nahpui Quarter mission, and in Prophecies it's after completing the Arguary Rock mission. It costs 500 gold to unlock a profession at the profession changer, and once it's unlocked you can change it to your secondary profession in a town or outpost by opening the skill box and selecting your secondary from the drop-down menu.

Hope that helps a little.

If you approach Guild Wars in the same manner as World of Warcraft, you are not going to like it.

One other thing to keep in mind, you should be using both runes and insignia on your armor AND that of your heroes, if you aren't doing that already! As well as getting better armor when available for your character. This is, IMO, the main thing to use your money on as you level up. It is surprising how many players completely ignore this.

Go with minor runes (major and superior take away too much health for too little gain except with special skill builds) to boost two of your attributes, usually one matching the +1 you get with your headgear and another you have a lot of points in. And the same with your heroes (their headgear will give another +1 to whatever attribute rune you put on it). The quest from the Rune Trader in Kamadan gives you a Rune of Minor Vigor (+30 Health), leaving two more available spots; two Rune of Vitae (+10 Health each) give a nice increase in helping keep you and your heroes alive and fighting longer. So that can net you +50 Health with just 3 runes!

For insignia, depending on how much gold you have, you might want something to raise your total energy such as Radiant on chest and legs, or Survivor insignia to take more damage. Paragons have a nice +10 Armor Centurion's insignia, but Survivor or Radiant might be more useful early on, depending on your play style. Last I checked they were a bit cheaper than the Centurion's as well.