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The Guardian

This profession guide is accurate as of BWE2.

The guardian is a devoted fighter who calls upon powerful virtues to smite enemies and protect allies. As dangerous with a staff as he is with a mighty two-handed hammer, a true guardian is a master tactician who knows when to sacrifice his own defenses to empower his allies to achieve victory.

-Official Guild Wars 2 Website

Overall Theme

The guardian, as the name suggests, is a highly defensive class. Even though they wear heavy armor, guardians have very little health compared to other professions. They make up for this with a myriad of powerful defensive abilities. A lot of their abilities simultaneously have both offensive and defensive uses, many of which involve burning opponents. They have a unique mechanic that takes the form of virtues: passive bonuses (occasional burning attacks, aegis every 40 seconds, healing) that can be sacrificed for a short time to give a similar bonus to nearby allies. The guardian also produces many symbols on the ground: AoE abilities that hurt enemies and help allies.

Weapons

Greatsword – The guardian’s greatsword is the definition of offense for guardian. Not only does it offer burning, might, and retaliation at close range (like Symbol of Wrath) it even has two powerful gap closers (like Binding Blade).

Hammer – Where the greatsword gives offensive power, the guardian gives defensive power, though it can be used as both. While it has no gap closers, it has great ability to keep opponents in melee range — or out (such as Ring of Warding and Zealot’s Embrace).

Staff – The staff is a mid-ranged option for the guardian that is largely defensive and full of utility in place of straight offense or defense like the other two-handed weapons (e.g., Line of Warding or Martyr). Because of this, the staff is a better secondary weapon than primary weapon in a build.

Mace (MH) – The mace is a highly defensive one-handed weapon that provides options for healing, protection, blocking, and even condition removal by itself using a combo between Symbol of Faith and Protector’s Strike.

Scepter – The scepter is the long-range option for the guardian, though its auto-attack is slow. It’s also offensively oriented with abilities like Chains of Light.

Sword (MH) – The sword, much like its two-handed counterpart, is an offensive weapon complete with a very useful gap closer in the form of Flashing Blade. 

Focus – The focus is a strong off-hand with both skills being a part of the offensive-defensive duality of the class (for example, Ray of Judgement).

Shield – As expected, the shield is a fully-defensive off-hand weapon with a considerable amount of power in its skills like Shield of Absorption.

Torch – The torch is a particularly fun off-hand weapon with interesting fire-based abilities. It’s mostly offensive in nature, including the ability to set yourself on fire and throw your Zealot’s Flame at enemies!

Underwater

Spear – The spear forms the guardian’s offensive abilities underwater, fighting at a medium and short range with abilities like Zealot’s Flurry. As with any close-range weapon, it has at least some ability (Brilliance) to keep yourself alive at such a short range.

Trident – The trident is the opposite of the spear: a long-ranged defensive weapon with terrific ability to remove conditions from allies with Purify and keep foes away from you by sinking them with Weight of Justice.

Slot Skills

The guardian’s slot skills also do a good job of keeping with the mostly defensive skills and many duality skills. The healing skills unfortunately have long cooldowns, with the shortest being the Signet of Resolve, which offers the most amount of healing over a long period of time. Healing Breeze is good when in working in close-together groups, and Shelter leaves the most to be desired, though the block makes it powerful if used well.

Consecration – All of the consecration skills are AoE abilities of a defensive nature. The most powerful non-elite defensive slot skills the guardian has are consecration skills. While initially targeted at your location (excepting Wall of Reflection), traits can make them ground-targeted.

Meditation – Meditations are all slot skills with an associated cast time that can be removed via traits. Two of them teleport you to either an enemy or ally, while the other two remove conditions. Meditations are fairly balanced between offense and defense.

Shout – All of the shouts are defensive, instant, multi-target buff skills. While not overly powerful, they do have relatively medium-length cooldowns (excepting “Retreat!”)

Signet – As with all signets, each skill as a passive ability that is put on recharge when its activated component is used. It is here that the guardian’s instant-revive ability, Signet of Mercy, lies. Signets are all either offensive or defensive without duality functions, with two of each.

Spirit Weapon – The spirit weapon skills summon a spirit weapon (hence the name) that follows the guardian around for a time and contributes to fights in its specialized role. Each of the weapons also has an ability that can be activated at the cost of destroying the weapon.

Elite – The Renewed Focus elite has an incredibly long recharge for a tiny duration, making it generally the least impactful elite the guardian has. The other two, Tome of Courage and Tome of Wrath, hold the guardian stationary while granting access to immensely powerful defensive and offensive spells, respectively.

Traits

The guardian’s five trait lines are named after personality virtues. The fifth, Virtues, contains Willpower - the guardian’s unique attribute that reduces virtue recharge.

Zeal (Pow/Exp) – The minor traits all involve symbols and their augmentation. The major traits give bonuses to spirit weapons, greatswords, scepter damage, and burning. The final traits in the line are Wrathful Spirits and Zealous Blade.

Radiance (Pre/Mal) – The minor traits boost Virtue of Justice (the burning virtue) and damage to conditioned foes. The major traits augment blindness, burning, signets, sword damage, spear damage, and torch skilll recharges. The final traits in the line are Perfect Inscriptions and Right Handed Strength.

Valor (Tou/Pro) – The minor traits give automatic Aegis at low health, recharge Virtue of Courage (aegis virtue), and give might on blocking. The major traits have buffs to meditation skills, shield skill recharges, toughness increases, mace damage, periodic condition removal, and more healing. The final traits are Altruistic Healing and Monk’s Focus.

Honor (Vit/Com) – The minor traits give vigor on criticals, healing on dodges, and increased damage at low health. The major traits give significant bonuses to honor and symbols, bonuses to reviving, bonuses to shout recharges, and two-handed recharges. The final traits are Battle Presence and Pure of Voice.

Virtues (Con/Wil) – The minor traits augment add boons to your virtues and give bonus damage for boons. The major traits augment your virtues, lengthen retaliations, buff consecrations, and extend elite skill durations. The final traits are Extended Consecrations and Judgemental.

Difficulty

The guardian is a fairly simple class with significantly less to keep track of than many other classes. The general underpowered nature of the virtues’ activated components (in their natural form) give less to focus on, making the guardian a good class for beginners. While being in melee is more hazardous than ranged, the guardian’s superb defenses make it an especially good place for beginning melee players, in both PvE and PvP.

Welcome, everyone, to another week of The Structure! I’m sure you all know by now, but ArenaNet announced to us yesterday that Guild Wars 2 will launch on August 28! That means head-start access for pre-purchasers beings August 25. Also, the final BWE will be July 20-22. Now with that out of the way, I figured I would go with another “for new players” topic this week and give everyone the lay of the land — literally! This week I’m going to cover the important points of the two SPvP maps we have thusfar: Battle of Kyhlo and Forest of Niflhel!

Primary Objectives

All SPvP maps at launch will have the same primary objective: “conquest” or capture point. Every map has three objectives. To claim them, simply stand inside and the meter will fill up. To take one from an enemy, stand in the enemy’s objective with more of your team than the enemy team. The meter will empty and then refill. Roughly every two seconds (slightly less), each team gets a point for each objective they hold. In addition, teams earn ten points whenever they kill an enemy player.

Battle of Kyhlo

The first map we got to see in GW2 is an “urban”-themed map named Battle of Kyhlo. The names of the three primary objectives are the mansion (blue objective), windmill (red objective), and clocktower (neutral objective). The windmill and mansion have an access path facing the clocktower and one facing the nearest team base as well as an exit onto a roof path. The clocktower has window entrances along the north and south sides which are accessible via ramps that wrap around the outside of the building. It also can be accessed by two staircases via an archway that runs east-west underneath the building.

In addition to the capture points, there are also trebuchets on the map (one for each team) that act as a secondary objective. Trebuchets can be used used to destroy buildings, kill or knockback enemy players, and even destroy the other trebuchet! If a trebuchet is destroyed, a repair kit will spawn in its team’s base which can be taken to the trebuchet to repair it.

The map itself is full of many buildings and pathways, including paths along the rooftops (pictured in yellow in the map above). There are many small archways (anywhere a path goes under a building) that act as choke points. The clocktower’s archway and the ends of both staircases form choke points to the objective. Both accesses to the mansion and windmill are each natural choke points. Many of the choke points can be avoided by taking alternate routes (e.g., using the roof-top paths for travel or the ramps to enter the clocktower).

There are three major notes I’d like to make for this map. While using the trebuchet, you cannot see the path in front of you or anyone on it until they’re up right beside you. When firing the trebuchet, you have to hold the button to fire further than simply flopping in front of you. There is an excellent hiding point outside both the windmill and mansion objectives to the right of the path facing the clocktower as you’re approaching them.

Forest of Niflhel

Forest of Niflhel was the second map we were shown (and the only other map we’ve seen thusfar) in GW2. The three primary objectives are named the henge (blue objective), the mine (red objective), and the keep (neutral objective). The henge and mine have two access points, one pointing directly inwards, adn the other pointing up at an angle toward the keep. The keep itself can be accessed from ramps on both the eastern and western ends, as well as ramps approaching from the northeast and northwest.

Beyond the primary objectives, there are two NPC bosses, referred to as “forest creatures”, that spawn at the beginning of the game. Whichever player scores the killing blow on a forest creature earns 40 points for his or her team. Once killed, the forest creatures will respawn three minutes after their death.

Unlike the Battle for Kyhlo map, the layout of Forest of Niflhel is very simple. There are no paths along high roof tops and tiny archway choke points. Instead, there are many wide paths that converge on narrower choke points at certain places. There is a major choke point at each entrance to the mine and windmill, and the keep itself is one big choke point. There is also a choke point near each end of the path between the mine and henge. There are also choke points on the paths leading from the mine and henge to the “loop” around the keep.

This map has four little tidbits that I would like to illuminate. The rear-access ramps to the keep are one-way paths: they end in platforms that you cannot climb back onto. Killing forest creatures quickly is very important, as letting the enemy have 40 points a few seconds before you can cost you the match. Additionally, as it is the killing blow that earns the points, one player with a single hard-hitting ability can easily attempt to steal the kill if they can find a decent hiding spot. The henge and mine each have a hiding spot behind the objectives (behind the pillars and behind the mine structure).

Remaining Maps

There are two more maps that we have been promised at launch. One of these maps is a mostly underwater map and the other is supposed to be nostalgic for Guild Wars players of the past. Mini-maps of these two were posted on Reddit a while back that essentially showed a ship-theme for the underwater map with an underwater objective and another map that looked very similar to the Warrior Isle GvG map from GW.

I started this blog with my current profession guides four months ago. Needless to say, they’re out of date. We hadn’t even seen the trait system at that time, so it’s time to write a whole new set, starting with the elementalist.

The Elementalist

This profession guide is accurate as of BWE2.

The elementalist channels natural forces of destruction, making fire, air, earth, and water do her bidding. What the elementalist lacks in physical toughness, she makes up for in her ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack, dropping foes from a distance before they can become a threat. Yet, despite her incredible offensive potential, versatility is what makes the elementalist truly formidable.

-Official Guild Wars 2 Website

Overall Theme

The elementalist is all about flexibility, adjustment, and dancing. They have a lot of weapon skills with long recharges, but make up four it with having four weapon sets at all times with a limited recharge on swapping. Their unique class mechanic is their ability to change between four elemental attunements in place of weapon swap. Each time an elementalist switches attunement, their previous attunement is placed on cooldown without a restriction on the remaining two attunements. Fire attunement typically deals with high-damage and burning, while water attunement specializes in healing, vulnerability, and chilling. Air attunement is about speed, evasion, and stunning, but earth attunement is about defense, bleeding, and crippling.

Weapons

Staff - The staff is full of powerful AoE abilities and combo fields. While the staff can be used for high damage output, it can at the same time be used to very easily keep foes at a distance. Key abilities that show the nature of the staff are Meteor Shower, Geyser, Frozen Ground, Static Field, Eruption, and Magnetic Aura.

Scepter - The scepter gives the elementalist several offensively-oriented skills with every attunement, though with less of an emphasis on AoE. Important skills with the scepter are Phoenix, Shatterstone, and Rock Barrier.

Dagger (MH) - Wielding a dagger in your main hand puts you at close range with the enemies while giving you adequate protection and gap-closers. Prime examples with the MH dagger are Burning Speed, Frozen Burst, Shocking Aura, and Magnetic Grasp.

Dagger (OH) - The off-hand dagger compliments the main-hand dagger with powerful close-range defenses and yet another gap closer. Make good use of Frost Aura, Cleansing Wave, Ride the Lightning, and Earthquake.

Focus - Lastly, the focus provides you with a set of very strong skills, including some of the strongest defensive skills in the profession’s repertoire. The focus is well-defined by Freezing Gust, Gale, and Obsidian Flesh.

Underwater

Along with a small list of above-water weapons, the elementalist has only one choice for underwater combat: the trident. All four attunements with the trident have a powerful slew of defensive abilities in addition to their regular themes, such as Lava Chains, Tidal Wave, Lightning Cage, and Rock Anchor.

Slot Skills

The elementalist’s slot skills continue to match the rest of the profession. Many of the skills are based on the different elements, and many change their functionality based on the elementalist’s current attunement. Of the three healing skills, only Glyph of Elemental Harmony isn’t drastically underpowered for its cooldown. It heals you and also gives you a different buff based on your current attunement.

Arcane - The arcane skills are based on pure magical energy and give guaranteed critical damage (with the exception of Arcane Shield). The two direct damage skills are also combo finishers, giving the opportunity for an elementalist to create combos on its own.

Conjure - The conjure skills work similarly to the kits of an engineer, but are more limited. They create an elemental weapon with a set number of charges in the elementalist’s hands in addition to a weapon on the ground. Each weapon has a combination of skills similar to other elementalist weapon skills and skills like those of other professions using that type of weapon.

Cantrip - Cantrips are mostly-defensive skills each bound to an element. Aside from those two factors, there is nothing else uniting the skills around a given theme.

Glyph - All four glyphs have a core functionality that changes based on the elementalist’s attunement. These skills offer even further flexibility and adaptability to situations depending on the effectiveness of their use.

Signet - Like all other signets, each has a passive ability that stays in effect while not recharging and an ability that can be activated. Each element has its own signet, and each signet (except Signet of Fire) has a generally defensive passive ability with a generally defensive activated ability, though obviously the real offense/defense balance is in the practical use.

Elite - The elementalist has an array of varied elite skills that also fit into the elemental spectrum. Like the Necromancer and Warrior, the elementalist has a form skill known as Tornado that gives powerful AoE damage with stability. The elites also provide another conjured weapon in the form of the powerful, but limited Fiery Greatsword. Lastly, the Glyph of Elementals is a beef-ed up version of its utility version, giving full flexibility across the entire board.

Traits

The elementalist has one trait line for each element along with a final trait line that reduces the cooldown on the elementalist’s attunements via Intelligence.

Fire Magic (Pow/Exp) - The minor traits focus on damage, especially involving burning. This line offers many talents involving burning, improvement while attuned to fire, might, and an increase in charges to conjure weapons. The final talents are Persisting Flames and Pyromancer’s Puissance.

Air Magic (Pre/Pro) - The minor traits give faster movement in air attunement, damage when attuning, and vulnerability on critical. Air Magic has some buffs for glyphs, damage increases, buffs to the attunement itself, a buff to healing, and a buff for auras. The final talents are Grounded and Zephyr’s Boon.

Earth Magic (Tou/Mal) - The minor traits give damage reduction, damage and cripple on attuning, and extra damage with full endurance. In this line, you can find many buffs to signets, a stun-break for conjure skills, buffs to bleeding, and buffs to the attunement itself. The final talents are Rock’s Fortitude and Written in Stone.

Water Magic (Vit/Hea) - The minor traits give healing with the attunement and a damage boost based on boons. Other traits give condition removal, vulnerability buffs, some cantrip buffs, buffs to the attunement, and regeneration. The final talents are Powerful Aura and Stop Drop and Roll.

Arcana (Con/Int) - The minor traits buff attunements in general and criticals. The major traits offer buffs to arcane skills, critical hits, increased AoE for staff, increased movement with a dagger, faster endurance regeneration with a scepter, and attunement-based buffs. The final traits are Elemental Surge and Evasive Arcana.

Difficulty

The elementalist is an easy class to jump into and start learning, with a very low barrier-of-entry for PvE. The abundance of defensive skills when swapping attunements gives a lot o breathing room for newer players. Learning to use all four attunements is critical to success in dungeons, tough situations, and even beginning PvP. Though the devs have announced a plan to implement something to make it less bearable, playing an elementalist requires unlocking twelve full weapon-bars worth of skills (48 skills), and four bars (16 skills) for underwater, more than any other profession.

Another week, another wonderful reading experience with The Structure! I hope everyone’s dealing well with their GW2 withdrawals! Just remember there’s the stress test on Wednesday (June 27) from 10am to 2pm PDT (1pm to 5pm EDT, 5pm to 9pm UTC)! This week, we’re going to talk a little bit about eSports and Guild Wars 2. I’ve written about GW2’s eSports viability on my blog before, but this time I’m actually talking about what kind of stuff we’re seeing already that makes it fully-castable.

Naturally, there are the essentials that you have to mention every now and then but shouldn’t talk about much. How much time is left in the match? Who’s ahead in the score? What’s the point-lead like? Which team has which objectives? At the current rate, who will win? Who’s favored to win? They’re really obvious, but we still have to mention them.

It’s also a little bit obvious, but you can talk about the teams in the match. Eventually, certain teams will be known for certain tactics. Certain players will become known for playing certain professions. As the game progresses after launch, we’ll see a lot of different team compositions coming out that will offer a variety of things. Supposedly, five-mesmer teams were ROFLstomping during the last beta.

I would certainly hope someone can tell who’s winning here.

Most of the stuff about the teams in a match are things that should be discussed going into the match and at the very beginning of it. During the match, there are a lot of different map tactics we’ve already seen going on that become crucial. Skills that give Swiftness in an AoE are already becoming a thing, and when it comes to high-end competition post-launch, they’ll be huge. Getting to your first objective and beating the other team to the first objective by two or three seconds could be the end of the match.

Think about it: two very even teams are lined up with almost identical compositions and the entire match is very even. But, the red team got both their objective and the middle objective two ticks earlier than the blue team in the match. That’s four points that the blue team shouldn’t have lost by. If you start thinking about being seconds early on killing Svanir or the Chieftain, you’re really thinking about a huge difference. There are a lot of matches in the hot join SPvP scene that end with a kill on one of the two Forest Creatures. If both creatures spawn when it’s 450 red to 470 blue, but the one nearest the red team spawns two seconds earlier, it’s game over if the blue team can’t somehow steal the kill.

If the other team had a creature kill instead of us, they wouldn’t have won here, but they’d at least be caught up to us.

Much as how you split your initial workers in StarCraft 2 is a huge deal, it will be equally important how teams split up at the beginning of matches. Is it better for their comp to send just one person to the objective nearest their base or will they need two to defend it if the enemy sends one over at the beginning? How many should they send toward the middle and how many should they send toward the Forest Creature or trebuchet or enemy’s objective?

On each map, there will be significant things to look at. Trebuchets can be very effective at killing enemy players out of the clock tower, so it will eventually be necessary to have someone destroy the enemy’s trebuchet. But, when will be the best time to do it? When will we see the time allocated for it? There’s a lot of things that, when you really get into high-level competition, will make some teams look like utter noobs, even though the majority of players will be wondering why it’s bad.

I personally thought this was the best time: when there was nothing else to do.

Here are a few things you could do when you get really picky with people. Blind condition only causes the next hit to miss. If you see someone get blinded and waste their big attack on it, they’re being noob. It also doesn’t stack, so if you see a player blind a player that’s already been blinded, the blinding player is a noob. If you see a player take a jump from one roof to another when it would be a second faster to drop to the ground, that player will be a noob.

Casting obviously isn’t about calling all of the players noobs. Casters have to be good at the game, sure, but many of the players in the matches are going to be better than the casters. But, when you really stop and think about a lot of what we’re already starting to see developing in tactics, and start looking at a lot of footage, there’s a ton of stuff out there that we’ll be able to fill matches with for commentary without digging into pointless things.

Casting isn’t about calling people noobs, but bunching like this deserves it.

Not having a spectator mode obvious puts a huge damper on all of this and puts eSports on the back-burner. ArenaNet knows the necessity of spectator mode to eSports, though, and they’re going to get it to us after launch (building a good PvP system is first priority). In the mean time, go look at some PvP footage. There’s a lot of PvP footage in the GW2WvW video gallery to go through. While you’re watching it, think about them critically. Put yourself in the place of a caster: what would you talk about? What do you see people doing that’s exceptionally good or pathetically bad? What do you see people doing that gives them a clear advantage over others?

Alright guys, I’ve got more work lined up as I can get to it while working towards the new PC coming in a few weeks. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up on what to expect over the next week-and-a-half or so (depending on available time). So, here are the projects I’ve got lined up:

New, updated guides to each of the professions. Each of these will be a bit more detailed than the last ones, so it may actually take a full two weeks to get them done. I’ll be starting them either tomorrow or this weekend.

I’ve still got to put together the footage I’ve got of the Ascalonian Catacombs run I did on explorable mode, which is a daunting task.

As fulfillment of a request, I’ll be doing a video about boons, conditions, and other effects. It will be similar to my post on the matter, but hopefully more informative.

As per another request, I’ll have a video coming out on making well-balanced PvP builds. This will be a bit more in-depth than the post on the matter for The Structure.

Speaking of, The Structure will continue as normal each week, going live here when I write it and live on GW2 WvW each Friday.

I’m still looking for more requests, questions, etc. to help customize the content I do to my readers and viewers. At the very least, let me know which professions you’d like to see the guides done for first and I’ll try to do them in order of popularity as I get more requests for each one. Request posts and videos as you like. Videos will take a little more to do since they involve more work than simply writing, but that’s simply to make sure they’ve got the proper amount of quality (or I may just be fighting with Youtube some more).

As a reminder, submit any requests or questions via my email, the questions/requests page, or by replying to this post. What do you guys want to see?

Another week, another column for The Structure! So, I made a fair number of builds over the weekend. Some worked out alright, some of them worked really well, and some of them I got ROFLstomped every time I saw another player. They can’t all be zingers. Anyway, as I was looking at some of the talents and some build possibilities, I had a few ideas about how to make a build that really facilitates learning the gist of SPvP and combat better than others. This time around, we’re going to look at one.

Different Levels You Have to Learn

There are actually some similarities here.

In everything you do, there are always multiple levels you have to focus on. If you’re playing an instrument in a wind band, you have to focus on the sound coming out of your own instrument, then you have to focus about matching the rest of your section, and you also have to think about blending with the rest of the band. If you play football (soccer), you have to think about your own technique to direct the ball. You have to think about that defender in front of you and how to beat them. You also have to think about the rest of the players on the field to know when you’re offsides, who’s open, etc., what the score is and how much you need a goal or a stop.

SPvP is very similar. At the lowest level, you have to think about your own skills. You’ve got to worry about when they’re on cooldown, when they’re off cooldown, etc. You’ve got to think about everything on your weapons, as well. Then you have to worry about the battle going on around you and the other players on both sides. Then, you have to think about the match as a whole. The objectives. The timer. The score. That lowest level of focus, on yourself, is the first one you have to have down. You’ve got to know your own abilities well.

Reducing the Workload For Your Brain

Elementalists have 25 skills to worry about at all times.

To a new player, there’s a lot to try to focus on. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you don’t have a handle on your own abilities, you’re going to get ROFLstomped by everyone you meet, even with a good build. But, if you don’t learn the higher mechanics, it won’t matter because you’ll be dynamite but never actually helping. So, where can you cut out some of the work? Get yourself a build that makes focusing on yourself less of a big deal.

What are the best ways to minimize the focus requirement of your build? For starters, don’t run with something that places a HEAVY demand on weapon-swapping. It’s always important, but if you’re having to constantly flip weapon bars, that’s a lot of skills. Also, you need relatively simply slot skills that don’t require a lot of thinking. The warrior, as it were, is a great place to start, and here’s why.

The Most Noob-Friendly First-Tier Talent

Signets are very simple, straight-forward skills.

In the Arms tree for warriors, there’s a first-tier talent called Deep Strike. It gives you 40 precision for each unused signet you have equipped. It’s that simple. You create a build using a lot of signets and rely on crits for damage. Trait yourself relatively offensively. Take a lot of Arms, some Strength, and definitely some Discipline (to get reduced signet recharges). Then, gear yourself very balanced. Take precision and vitality or a good mix of stats.

For your slot skills, take all signets: Healing Signet, Dolyak Signet, Signet of Stamina, Signet of Fury, and Signet of Rage. If you set up with dual sword or dual axes in mind, you can have a minimal amount to worry about for weapon swapping (just have a war-horn in the off-hand for getting around faster), leaving most of your focus on your first five skills. Definitely learn what your signets do, but don’t use them unless you actually need to. If you’re loaded with conditions and can’t get away from someone, use the Signet of Stamina. If you need to burst people down quickly, use the Signet of Rage. If someone with a big hammer is coming up to try to knock you around, use Dolyak Signet.

With mostly only six skills to worry about most of the time (main weapon bar and heal), you have a lot less to be on your mind. Now, you’re free to spend more time looking up at the rest of the stuff on the screen and think about the other players and the other parts of the map without fumbling around your number keys or looking down at your cooldowns. You won’t be perfect. You won’t steamroll everyone. But, you’ll have an easier time learning it than you would if you’re worried about running around. Here’s some parting thoughts on what to do and not do when you’re starting out.

Sometimes you just gotta hug that floor to get better.

What to Avoid in Noob-Friendly Builds

• Elementalists - They’re easy to get into in PvE, but in SPvP, having four bars is a lot to think about.
• Engineers’ kits - Again, it’s adding that much more to worry about with lots of bars.
• Mesmer - Clones add an entire extra level of thinking to what you do. They’re rewarding when you’re good with them, but not a great starting point.
• Complex profession mechanics - If pets bug you, death shroud bugs you, etc., avoid those professions.
• Skills that switch into other skills a lot - Just a big hassle, really
• Completely dissimilar weapon sets - The more alike, the less to worry about
• Fully-offensive builds - Trust me, you really want that extra padding to make up for your mistakes.

Other Good Places to Start

• Guardians - The high defense is very forgiving.
• Thieves - They’re not overly simple, but there’s nothing overly complicated.
• Engineers with Turrets - Turrets are getting buffed, and they’re largely use and forget until you need to pick up and move.
• Balanced and defensive builds - Again, it really helps having a little breathing room with the health bar.

Hey guys! So, I decided to do you all a big favor tonight and prowl through the post history of all the devs on the forums so that you don’t have to. I have come out of the forums unscathed, carrying bags of treasure: three posts that I thought were the most interesting. So, let’s jump into them (click the posts to make them bigger).

‘

Let me sum this one up for you: in each map out in the world, there’s a little area of crafting material supernodes that provide a rare material. Each area has 8, and they’re the only place (or one of the only two places) where you can get these materials. You can only get them once a day, but they’re extra special. It’s a nice way to have rare materials other than hoping to maybe find a randomly generated rare node.

‘This one’s really awesome. If you aren’t familiar with the Mystic Forge, it’s a way to recycle items. In the center of Lion’s Arch is this big blue shiny thing. You use it, give it four items, and it spits out a new item based on what you gave it. If you give it a bunch of weapons, it’ll give you a weapon. If you give it a sword, it’ll give you a sword. If you give it specific lists of stuff, it will soon start giving you specific dyes. We’ll have to work out what ingredients make what colors, but this will be a nice way to get those  couple dyes out of the list of 400 that you really want.

More aesthetics, this is huge. They’re putting in a dressing room. If you haven’t played an MMORPG with this feature before, let me explain it: essentially, when you have an item linked in chat, or on the Trading Post, or in your inventory, and you don’t want to buy it/soulbind it yet, you can open a new window that shows your character wearing that item. To say that it’s a mandatory requirement in a game in which gear progression is driven by degrees of awesome looks is an understatement. Not particularly huge news, but significant just the same.

At some point I’ll try to look at the Reddit AMA from last week, but that will be a while. Videos should start coming out tomorrow, including more videos featuring me on camera.

Okay guys, the beta’s over. Here’s video I got:

A little WvW action running around with some guys for like two hours

Part of the only thing more frustrating than golf: the WvW dungeon/jump puzzle/holycowwhydidIwastesomuchtimeintheredamnmynetforcrashingonmerightbeforeIgottotheend.

Something like three hours in Ascalon Catacombs explorable mode (lots of stops for breaks, but it was all just part of one attempt, we gave up).

Tons of SPvP

Some other screens and various stuff

I forget the rest

I’ll start working on it tomorrow night.

Hey everyone! Just a reminder that for anyone that hasn’t chosen their server or wants to leave their server, I’m going to be on Darkhaven with the Gamebreaker TV community! Either way, my elementalist that I’ll be playing a lot is named Yoshi Gwtwo, and you’re all more than welcome to pm me during the day and ask me questions. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m not in the middle of recording!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the special Beta Weekend Event 2 edition of The Structure! While TS is a column dedicated to SPvP, this week we’re talking about both SPvP and WvW. I’ve got some helpful tips for everyone regarding both, but first we’ve got big news on both fronts. Earlier this week, ArenaNet posted on the official blog what we would be seeing added to the game for this weekend, and everyone’s excited about it. What do us PvP nerds get to geek out over this weekend?

For everyone that’s into SPvP, we get to finally see automated tournaments! We don’t yet have player-defined matches or tournaments yet (something we have been promised at launch), but this is a big step up from having just a “Join a Match” button. They’re also drastically expanding the WvW experience. Things to be excited about include skill challenges to help WvW as a viable leveling method, dynamic events to provide more PvE components, and a PvP mini-dungeon that includes a chest and loot!

Now, on to business as usual. I know a lot of people in the last beta that did virtually (or literally) nothing except play WvW. I know a lot of people that did only SPvP and no WvW. Some of you reading this are probably in one of those two groups. Sure, there are going to be new things on both sides to go back and check out, but this weekend I hope that you’ll give the other a chance as well. That’s why for this pre-beta edition of TS, I’m coming up with a list of tips to take with you as you go from one into the other.

For Going From WvW Into SPvP

If you’ve played WvW and are going to try SPvP for the first time, follow these few tips to make yourself more successful in your new endeavor:

• Big fights over an objective are actually not helpful. If three of the enemy team are at one objective, that’s the last place you want to be. That means there are two other objectives with one player each (where you can simply fight them off) or no players at all simply waiting to be captured.

• The objectives in SPvP are small. While you can stand anywhere and nuke things in WvW to help break into a keep in WvW, nothing you’re doing actually helps win in SPvP if you’re not in the circles.

• SPvP matches are short. It takes very little time to go from winning to losing in SPvP. Even if you have every objective in SPvP, it takes less than 30 seconds for the enemy team to run in and take over two objectives very quickly and suddenly be gaining the lead on you.

For Going From SPvP Into WvW

If you’ve played SPvP and are going into WvW for the first time, follow these tips to make yourself more successful in your new endeavor:

• Killing off the defense actually helps take the objective. Kill enemy siege weapons quickly, and stop new ones from being built. Since it takes very few players to erect a siege weapon and wreak havoc on your team, all enemy players are a significant threat.

• There are four maps to choose from. It sounds like it should be obvious, but a lot of people don’t understand that there are other maps aside from the Eternal Battlegrounds. If your side is getting completely demolished in EB, grab a bunch of guildies/friends, pick a Borderlands map you don’t have much of, and you can often ROFLstomp your way through most of the map before other players figure out what’s how to stop you.

• Figure out who you’re running with. While you’re not going to want to get everyone on your team into Skype like you will for SPvP tournaments, it’s very important to know who the people on your side are. If there’s one large guild running together, talk to them. Chances are someone in that guild may be running a stream to help coordinate people. If no one’s running a stream and you can, offer to do so. It may seem insignificant, but that tiny amount of coordination is all it takes to decimate the unorganized masses.

Extra Tips

Lastly, everyone have a ton of fun this weekend! As usual, I will be with the Gamebreaker TV folks on Darkhaven (unless they announce a server transfer, in which case I will follow them), and you can add me as Yoshi Gwtwo. For more beginner’s tips for WvW and SPvP, read my guide for each (link: WvW, SPvP). Happy pwning!

The beta starts Friday, and I really wanted to come up with something special for all of my followers as we head into the beta. I’ve done several posts before on being a good tester, things to help you enjoy the beta, not overdoing yourself in the beta, etc. But, I wanted something really different that could make the game even cooler for you. So, here goes:

With so many in the world, the odds are that you know a few Star Trek fans. Everyone loves to hate on them for being obsessive nerds, setting the stereotype for everyone everywhere. It’s not just knowing all the names of the major characters or all the plot lines. It’s knowing every minor character, half the episode numbers, every weapon and piece of technology, and even learning to speak Klingon. The odds of one of those few Star Trek fans you know being able to speak Klingon is pretty high. While you’re outwardly commenting on how nerdy they are, be honest for a moment: you secretly think that level of devotion is admirable and kind of cool. There are plenty of Lord of the Rings fans that are fluent in Elven. One of my friends can actually learned the Dragon language in Skyrim. We may not have a full language in Guild Wars 2, but we do have a alphabet in the lore that is heavily used.

New Krytan in the Lore

Similar to real world history, the invention of the printing press by the charr created a real need for literacy in Tyria. Afterall, what had been the of a common man learning to read when few would write? If all reading material has to be hand-written, there isn’t an overwhelming desire to put out anything that required more than one copy. Once the charr had invented the printing press, it was easy to mass produce written material. With this power in mind, the Durmand Priory set to teach the world how to read. They combined Old Ascalonian (pictured below, from the official GW wiki). and Old Krytan alphabets to produce the New Krytan alphabet, so that written communication may be universal throughout Tyria. Since its creation in 1105 AE, New Krytan has been spread by the Durmand Priory to all of the major races. While all of the major races have accepted it and learned to read it, some (mainly the asura) still largely reject New Krytan and continue to teach their own language and alphabet as well.

Teaching Yourself New Krytan

There’s likely a few of you that just read that section title and are thinking, “why would I want to learn New Krytan?” First off, it’s easy. Second, if you’re a really dedicated Guild Wars 2 fan, it’s a must. Lastly, there is a s**tload (yes, a standard unit of measurement) of signs, bottles, and other things in the game that are written in New Krytan. ArenaNet hasn’t published the alphabet for us. Instead, valiant GW2 fans have hunted through every screenshot and every part of the game available to us to finally come up with all of them. The alphabet is listed here on the official wiki. The first step in teaching yourself New Krytan is to simply write the alphabet out twice (or more if really necessary) on a piece of paper, like so:

Pay attention that you try to write as best as you can at the beginning, to train yourself with all of the nuances present with each character. Since I’ve been doing this for months, I’m a little sloppy, as you can see. Next, move the alphabet you just wrote somewhere that you can’t see it, and grab a new sheet of paper. Now, start writing out a few words with different variety of letters. Picking out a lot of different words and names in the lore is a good place to find a bunch of words with a good variety. Now that you have these words in mind, start writing them out. If you can’t remember a letter when you’re writing the word, leave it blank and keep going. After you’ve written all of your words, use your alphabet you wrote to fill them in. Do it again tomorrow, the exact same way. After you finish doing it for the second time, write out the alphabet completely blind. Check back on any letters you missed after getting to the end. By that point, you should be mostly set.

As I said before, writing is the easy part. Reading New Krytan takes a bit more. The best thing you can do is go looking around on forums and finding things people have written out in new Krytan. Reading what you wrote doesn’t help you, because you know what you wrote. Find things that you didn’t write out there (there’s quite a lot, believe it or not), and translate all of those. For an example, the above picture is the second part of what I tell you to do to learn to write (ignore the absent-minded ‘w’ in place of ‘u’ in ‘human’ and forgetting how to spell ‘Zhaitan’). At the beginning is a list of all of the races. Then follows the list of the different homes of each race. Afterwards are the list of all of the elder dragons, followed by the list of the members of Destiny’s Edge. You’ll have to figure out the last bit by yourself.

So, here’s big news on Gamebreaker TV earlier today: our skills and traits are now going to be tiered off. What does this mean? It means that your utility skills and major traits are divided into tiers. You now have to buy a certain number of one tier before you can move on to another tier. I’m not sure how this will work with major traits (do you have to pick lower ones first or simply spend so many trait points), but it’s certainly going to drive some people up the wall with the skills.