My main is an 80 guardian and while at 80 in exotics, they are pretty damn tough, that.s not true at all levels. The other part is that the event mobs toss out a lot of nasty conditions that, even at 80, eat through my health crazy fast. So yeah, the event probably isn’t the best indicator of how tough a guardian or any character is.
My main tips would be to hit the trading post and make sure you have gear that’s not too far behind in level. I think at 37 you’re also still using gear that only has one or two stats on it. Make sure you have a good mix of Vitality and Toughness and aren’t going all power and precision/crit. You’ll kill a little slower but you’ll survive a lot longer. I used mace and shield a lot in my mid levels as there is some good healing and survivability moves there.
Also take a look at your skills and make sure you are using some that remove conditions. That way when you get those nasty poisons etc you can clear them off quickly. And don’t forget to use food and sharpening stones, both can be a nice boost to the stats you’re low on.
El_Chaco
5982
The tower is tough. I have an 80 Guardian with all Exotics running an “Unkillable” build and I get hammered in there. You aren’t doing it alone are you? It works a lot better if you stick with 2 or 3 others as you move through there.
Wolff
5983
Dodge dodge dodge
Even tanky builds should be trying not to get hit. It took me a decent chunk of time to break my old mmo habits in gw2.
If conditions are troublesome for you check out namastegaming guardian leveling build on youtube.
JFrazer
5984
A lot of what makes the Guardian so hard to kill is countered by the Tower itself. The poison that is pretty much everywhere in that zone isn’t able to be stripped (that I know of) without the poison counter (takes something like 300 blossoms to unlock the merchant and then buy the skill).
I’m still really new to the game. My guardian build is meant for survival (sword + shield primary with staff secondary), primarily for WvWvW group play. Solo, you have to do something stupid or actually attempt to kill yourself with the build I’m using. But in the tower… even in a huge group, I end up needing to get picked up a lot.
Giaddon
5985
Note that the toxin counter is 25 skill points, also (instead of blossoms).
Razgon
5986
Thanks for the helpful posts, guys. I’m running it alone, or trying to tag along with others. I do still die pretty often. I wasn’t aware that I could counter the poison in there actually.
The last part is meant to be soloed though, right? And I had to restart sooo many times, that my armor broke completely 3 times.
You can solo or group it. I soloed it and the /map chat opinion seems to be that it’s easier that way. I did equip the new heal skill and that helped my survival a lot. Also dodging.
magnet
5988
You probably noticed all the other dead and dying players throughout the tower, yes?
It’s not just you.
I wouldn’t bother with the poison counter. It’s a pretty crappy heal on a long cooldown. Most class heals are going to serve you better in there. This probably depends on your class though; as a warrior my healing signet is a much better choice than they new skill.
You should run condition removal/stun breaks/stability from other skills if you can though. The condition spam in there is over the top, and while there’s no way you can really keep it under control in some areas, you can at least get rid of the worst of it to keep yourself going in tight spots.
For specific tips:
The exploding plants aren’t bad if you stay near the edge of their radius. You can just walk out without wasting a dodge if needed if you stay near the edge.
Don’t get into it with the Elite Hallucinatory Grenadier unless you’re rolling deep; that thing is much, much worse than the other elites in there.
Most of the events aren’t too bad, but the Champion Krait Warlock is nasty without enough people; he throws out so much condition spam that you’re probably going to get worn down.
Don’t go pure berserker if you’re having trouble. I run with a lot of PVT gear for WvW, and I often come up to piles of dead bodies, grind down whatever killed them, and rez a stack of people who were getting 1-2 shot.
People suck at fighting that worm event. If someone goes down in one of the vortexes, they’re probably not worth rezzing in the fight even if you can find a way to pull it off. Just make sure you stay alive and out of the vortexes.
Veteran Toxic Assassins are a kill priority. They will screw up your mobility badly, and wear you down.
When Nightmare Court are downed, they can call in other NPCs for help. If the court member isn’t inherently a huge threat, you may want to not down them until you thin things out, so you don’t end up dogpiled with more enemies coming in. This is doubly true because the melee krait have a slow cast high damage attack they will line up on you while you’re stomping.
Keep your head if you’re going solo. Getting through solo is about knowing when to methodically clear, and when to sprint through.
If you come up on dead people, you may want to run past them, drop what’s following you, and clear a safe spot ahead of them so you have some room to work in dealing with whatever killed them.
I’ve been able to drop enemies off me by relogging quickly. It’s especially handy when you have a couple elites; it’s faster to move past their aggro range and spend a few seconds relogging than grind through those health pools.
I wouldn’t let any achievements you want in there sit past this weekend. That place will probably be a ghost town in short order. I’ve been farming it a bit, and I’m having fun, but the key fragment drop rate is too low to be compelling.
As mentioned above, re-arrange your gear and respec your talents into Toughness/Vitality + survival talents. Then you can see how you are doing and introduce more damage (by replacing defensive stats/talents) to your build as needed.
It was mentioned that positional awareness and dodging is very important during the fights but I wanted to mention one more thing that is specific to Guardians. It’s been long time since I played mine but I remember them having a lot of Blinding abilities/talents. When a mob has Blind on it, it will miss the next shot. If paying attention, Guardian can mitigate A LOT of damage this way. Not indefinitely but for very long time, after which you get some hits and then your cooldowns refresh and you can Blind some more. But you need to be careful and not override your Blinds. Watch the mob’s status bar and if it already has a Blind applied, hold on and wait for it to use it up, then apply a new one. Re-applying/overriding Blind only refreshes its timer, which is mostly useless since mobs attack every 2-3 seconds anyway.
This Blinding mechanic was the best thing I enjoyed on my Guardian. It’s not terribly complicated but requires some attention. It’s not terribly overpowered but, coupled with dodges, allows to cancel out A LOT of mob’s damage. Just the right mix to really enjoy your character and to feel really powerful and unique.
Level 80’d my Hunter over the past weekend. First time I ever maxed out a PC in any MMO, and in GW2 it was a surprisingly fun experience. I still have yet to finish the last story mission, since it’s a dungeon, but I’m busy with my guildmates going after the Marionette (unsuccessfully), Shatterer, et.al. for loot. Rolled up a warrior alt for the downtime.
I’m still enjoying Guild Wars; the “living story” fortnightly updates keep sucking me back in.
The Twisted Marionette in the most recent update was well done. It needs the whole map to take part (100+ people) but the fight mechanics are interesting and by splitting the groups up it makes sure that every participant has to contribute in order to beat it. Some of the servers seem to have got it it down to a pat so if you still are not having much success you can try guesting or looking for a well organized overflow. If there is a commander in each lane then that is a good sign.
The next update should be launching today, with a new map for the world vs. world large scale battles.
I just started playing GW2 in the past month - my first MMO! Coming from a wargame/flight sim background, it has been a steep learning curve for me as I’ve had to learn the vernacular and idiosyncrasies from the ground up, but thanks to a great forum, plenty of youtube videos, and some ingame help, I’m slowly but surely getting a handle on it. I’m currently a level 18 elementalist and am just now getting a firm grasp on using combos, and am about to delve into crafting.
My overall impressions of MMOs (and this game in particular) has been very positive. I was rather surprised that I’m enjoying it as much as I am. My biggest issue to date has been finding the best way to control my character and interacting with the UI. I’ve tried several combinations of keyboard, mouse, and G-13 key pad, but haven’t found the sweet spot yet (spoiled by too many hours flying with a HOTAS) Thinking very seriously about getting a Logitech G-600 MMO mouse with 12 buttons on the thumb side. Having all my skills and attacks hotkeyed to those buttons looks like just the ticket. Anyone out there have this? The glowing reviews have almost got me to the point of clicking the buy button…
KevinC
5994
Get it, you won’t regret it. They are the HOTAS for the MMO world. Hell, I use that mouse for everything, I can’t game without it anymore. The Razer Naga was the first mouse to do the 12-button thing and while it’s a very good mouse in it’s own right, I prefer the G-600 because the ergonomics of it fit me better (concave number pad as opposed to convex works a lot better for me).
Thanks for the recommendation. My wallet is now $54 lighter. Just out of curiosity, what’s the muscle memory learning curve like on it? Do you mis-click very often? Seems like a lot of buttons in a very small area…
KevinC
5996
FWIW, I’m 6’7" and have large hands. I can’t recall any mis-clicks to speak of, so I don’t think the number pad is too cramped. The “5” and “8” buttons have a ridge (like D/F and J/K keys do on a keyboard) on it and each button is shaped and feels different based on the concave curve of the number pad, so I don’t have any issues with not knowing what button I’m pressing. With large hands, 1-9 is very comfortable to reach, 10-12 is OK but I tend to reserve those for non-critical functions like bringing up the map or my inventory. There’s also a large “Shift” type mouse button that my ring finger rests on, to the right of RMB. I either use that as a sensitivity toggle (in FPS games) or as an ALT or CTRL key for MMOs, where it changes the meaning of buttons 1-12. Between that, I have as many buttons as I’d ever need.
For muscle memory, it’ll take a little bit to get adept with it, but the learning curve wasn’t too steep. Something like GW2 is a perfect game to get accustomed to the mouse with. After a few sessions I think you’ll get in the groove.
HRose
5997
I can’t really comment since this is basically the first time I go PvP with a level 16 character, yet I bought the game a year ago, but the new WvW map is kind of awesome.
It’s all up in the sky with rope bridges everywhere. It looks amazing in the game.
I wish I could take screenshot without the damn character in the way.
fdsaion
5998
Try /sleep and aiming your camera upwardish, or use a wall?
Finished the story (Arah dungeon) last night with a PuG. Pretty intense experience; particularly the part where the rest of my party wiped – and I alone was left to save the day against 3 elite risen gorillas and a bunch of eyestalk turrets. Fortunately for all involved, my PC is a hunter, and I spent around 10 minutes running in circles, clearing the eyestalk turrets whilst avoiding the gorillas. I even got knocked down, but my pet made a successful revive. Eventually, after clearing the turrets, I was able to box in the gorillas by using my pet and some convenient landscape geometry, which allowed me to revive my team. That’s definitely the high point for me in any MMO. Pretty much wasted on a PuG but there’s gonna be a couple of folks at least who remember the die-hard hunter.
Shit loot though for all that work. Tons of equipment, but precisely one (1) item that I could use. Some mats. Everything else went to auction.
Time for Mists and dungeons now, I guess.
