Level Progress
- Thread starter Waynos
- Start date
RyanB
Legacy of Elijah Guild Leader
Heh, that's what my stuff looked like a few weeks in, though all toons were in the teens. Got sad hearing everyone else doing dungeons so picked a main. 
Question for you running alts - any you like the best? Any you feel are underpowered? Just looking at your levels for guardian vs warrior there seems to be at least a little hint there.
Question for you running alts - any you like the best? Any you feel are underpowered? Just looking at your levels for guardian vs warrior there seems to be at least a little hint there.
Malchiel
New Member
I am addicted to my Warrior. Got him to almost level 40 in 3 1/2 days.
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Heh, that's what my stuff looked like a few weeks in, though all toons were in the teens. Got sad hearing everyone else doing dungeons so picked a main.
Question for you running alts - any you like the best? Any you feel are underpowered? Just looking at your levels for guardian vs warrior there seems to be at least a little hint there.
As far as favorites i'm conflicted,
I like Guardian and Thief alot. (stealth-mega damage vs. Tank lol)
Engineer is low level so it feels way underpowered and i die alot. (might be bad trait settings or lack of points)
Necro is getting better for me...i have a massive bleed damage build im working on and i seem to stay alive if i act properly in tough spots.
Elementalist is so squishy i am losing interest..im not the type that can switch through 4 attunements to stay alive fast enough lol
Mesmer is fun but i need to fight through the lack of trait points to get better
Ranger is great!! i love trap builds for when the enemy gets past my meatshield/pet
Warrior i havent got into it yet, not because of a flaw i seen but just been too busy
with the characters that i use for Dungeons,Fractals and WvW lol
hope that helps
I've got Guardian at 46, Mesmer 71, and Thief 23. The two other toons are in their teens or lower. If you added up all of the characters I've deleted and started over, I'd have a lot more levels accumulated!
I think the special events and crafting are what got me to finally settle in and work on my Mesmer. Special events, because the things I was most interested in required a high level character, and crafting, because, like everyone else, I discovered that crafting costs a huge amount of money and doesn't pay any back. Oh, and a third thing, the discovery that some classes just work funky until level 40 when you can get master level traits.
So I figured it'd be best to buckled down and fight my altaholism. You make so much more money at higher levels, with an 80 toon I have the opportunity to get a few gold together and pay for the mats to fast forward the rest of the professions through the early, "wish I could trait", levels. And I wouldn't miss any other events due to being low level.
The Greatsword bugs almost derailed my plans, since I'd leveled to 60 or so on Staff Greatsword. I was a little disappointed, which is why I got a thief to 23 while taking a break, but Wintersday coming persuaded me to get back to Mesmer and finish her off. Looked up a condition based staff build, and am back on track. I'm hoping to hit 80 before Friday. It'll be close.
I think the special events and crafting are what got me to finally settle in and work on my Mesmer. Special events, because the things I was most interested in required a high level character, and crafting, because, like everyone else, I discovered that crafting costs a huge amount of money and doesn't pay any back. Oh, and a third thing, the discovery that some classes just work funky until level 40 when you can get master level traits.
So I figured it'd be best to buckled down and fight my altaholism. You make so much more money at higher levels, with an 80 toon I have the opportunity to get a few gold together and pay for the mats to fast forward the rest of the professions through the early, "wish I could trait", levels. And I wouldn't miss any other events due to being low level.
The Greatsword bugs almost derailed my plans, since I'd leveled to 60 or so on Staff Greatsword. I was a little disappointed, which is why I got a thief to 23 while taking a break, but Wintersday coming persuaded me to get back to Mesmer and finish her off. Looked up a condition based staff build, and am back on track. I'm hoping to hit 80 before Friday. It'll be close.
Abba San
Legacy of Elijah [LoE] - Proud Grandfather
Keep us posted on your Mesmer - that is what I am starting next.
Definitely go 5 points in Illusion first for Illusionist's Celerity. It helps all of your illusion summoning cooldowns, regardless of weapon, and makes a big difference.
If you can scrape together the 20 gold easily, I'd definitely sink it to fast-forward from 10 to 30. I enjoyed my mesmer most of the way through, but a lot of people report being frustrated before they get to 40 and get the master traits unlocked. It's a lot like Engineer that way. Suddenly you get a couple of synergistic traits and it feels so much smoother.
I did Staff/Greatsword for most of my leveling, but Greatsword had some pretty significant bugs introduced during the last patch that impacted its damage as well as iBerserker's ability to hit, which not only causes damage issues but impacts the multi-target cripple that helps you kite.
Now I'm running something very close to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-B3mkM7dqM which is a condition specific build that relies primarily on staff. A lot of people on forums say condition builds aren't as good, but I'm finding it to have good survivability.
The number one thing to know about Mesmer, I think, is that it has a distinct playstyle. There's a ramp-up time to your damage, so it's kind of clunky if you try and pull one mob at a time and kill before moving on to the next. It also doesn't have the AoE nuke capability of the Ele, so it's not a matter of aggroing several mobs, bundling them up to hit together.
It's more like a rolling destruction assembly line. You don't want your illusions all on one mob, because when the mob dies, so do they. Instead, you spread them around, fighting several at a time. When one dies, you grab another to add to the group. Once you get the damage rolling, you don't have to keep ramping up, you just keep cycling in more enemies to replace the old ones. It does work out to a sort of AoE. You have a lot of bouncing attacks and shatters and "on death clone" traits are all AoE. It's just important that you cycle targets as you go, unlike ground targeting or single target spells that hit everything around them.
In one of those "comprehensive mesmer guide" videos (he's up to four or five now) he demonstrates this a bit. I'm not sure if its in the one I posted or one of the others. Once I locked on to that rolling style, the mesmer made a lot of sense to me.
If you can scrape together the 20 gold easily, I'd definitely sink it to fast-forward from 10 to 30. I enjoyed my mesmer most of the way through, but a lot of people report being frustrated before they get to 40 and get the master traits unlocked. It's a lot like Engineer that way. Suddenly you get a couple of synergistic traits and it feels so much smoother.
I did Staff/Greatsword for most of my leveling, but Greatsword had some pretty significant bugs introduced during the last patch that impacted its damage as well as iBerserker's ability to hit, which not only causes damage issues but impacts the multi-target cripple that helps you kite.
Now I'm running something very close to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-B3mkM7dqM which is a condition specific build that relies primarily on staff. A lot of people on forums say condition builds aren't as good, but I'm finding it to have good survivability.
The number one thing to know about Mesmer, I think, is that it has a distinct playstyle. There's a ramp-up time to your damage, so it's kind of clunky if you try and pull one mob at a time and kill before moving on to the next. It also doesn't have the AoE nuke capability of the Ele, so it's not a matter of aggroing several mobs, bundling them up to hit together.
It's more like a rolling destruction assembly line. You don't want your illusions all on one mob, because when the mob dies, so do they. Instead, you spread them around, fighting several at a time. When one dies, you grab another to add to the group. Once you get the damage rolling, you don't have to keep ramping up, you just keep cycling in more enemies to replace the old ones. It does work out to a sort of AoE. You have a lot of bouncing attacks and shatters and "on death clone" traits are all AoE. It's just important that you cycle targets as you go, unlike ground targeting or single target spells that hit everything around them.
In one of those "comprehensive mesmer guide" videos (he's up to four or five now) he demonstrates this a bit. I'm not sure if its in the one I posted or one of the others. Once I locked on to that rolling style, the mesmer made a lot of sense to me.
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Abba San
Legacy of Elijah [LoE] - Proud Grandfather
thanks - that is good to know - I'm rolling a Mesmer - hopefully today.
That was a great video.
maybe i will try the staff - sword focus build seeing how the greatsword has been lacking alot
DZwart
Legacy of Elijah Officer
I seem to have the alt issues going too:
73 - Ranger
46 - Guardian
44 - Ele
16 - Eng
I've been itching to play the engineer too, so probably going to be distracted with that for a bit now too.
I was able to finish off "Lifetime Survivor" this weekend, so that one's out of the way now.
If I can get a few consecutive hours to play, I'm going to have to start begging for help with dungeons since I haven't done any yet.
73 - Ranger
46 - Guardian
44 - Ele
16 - Eng
I've been itching to play the engineer too, so probably going to be distracted with that for a bit now too.
I was able to finish off "Lifetime Survivor" this weekend, so that one's out of the way now.
If I can get a few consecutive hours to play, I'm going to have to start begging for help with dungeons since I haven't done any yet.
A lot of people seem to like Sword on the Mesmer, and I keep trying it, but for some reason it bugs me. I think maybe being rooted in place for Blurred Frenzy feels so wrong on a profession that is normally dodging in and out and dropping illusions everywhere. So many people like it, there must just be something I'm not getting.
The build in the video really concentrates on buffing the condition damage, which isn't present on the sword. Focus is nice for the speed boost while traveling, and occasionally the Warden seems useful, but so far I haven't felt the need to switch out of staff at all in combat. I'm guessing sword would be good there for a final burst when you know Blurred Frenzy will finish your foe, but Mind Wrack is off cooldown pretty frequently with 20 points in Illusions.
I wish they would tweak scepter. It used to be the confusion weapon, which would go well with condition damage, but they took the confusion off the #1 attack. Looks like people still use it in PvP, but for PvE it seems very lackluster.
My altaholism was flaring up again today. Six levels from 80 on the Mesmer, and I'm still thinking about another character. I'd thinking maybe ranger...
The build in the video really concentrates on buffing the condition damage, which isn't present on the sword. Focus is nice for the speed boost while traveling, and occasionally the Warden seems useful, but so far I haven't felt the need to switch out of staff at all in combat. I'm guessing sword would be good there for a final burst when you know Blurred Frenzy will finish your foe, but Mind Wrack is off cooldown pretty frequently with 20 points in Illusions.
I wish they would tweak scepter. It used to be the confusion weapon, which would go well with condition damage, but they took the confusion off the #1 attack. Looks like people still use it in PvP, but for PvE it seems very lackluster.
My altaholism was flaring up again today. Six levels from 80 on the Mesmer, and I'm still thinking about another character. I'd thinking maybe ranger...
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Koeril
New Member
Don't give up when you are so close! You can doooo eeeeeet!
Whoa ... what?? Surely you aren't saying to spend 20 gold on tradeskills?? You can do that for far cheaper with chef (1g and like 2k karma from 1-400) and not artificer (uses the most fine mats like claws, poison sac, etc). Even artificer only cost me 7g and I had to buy all my materials except for the last tier. I think the others were about 4-5g, but I didn't track them like I did artificer.
Whoa ... what?? Surely you aren't saying to spend 20 gold on tradeskills?? You can do that for far cheaper with chef (1g and like 2k karma from 1-400) and not artificer (uses the most fine mats like claws, poison sac, etc). Even artificer only cost me 7g and I had to buy all my materials except for the last tier. I think the others were about 4-5g, but I didn't track them like I did artificer.
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Good to know, Koeril, I've never done it myself. I've just seen it thrown about that you can get two crafts to 400 if you throw about 20g at it. Exciting to see that it doesn't even cost that much, as I definitely plan on short-cutting several of my alts via crafting.
It should cost a lot less for me on the first one, even, because my Mesmer has been filling up my banking tab until it's overflowing.
Definitely sticking with my her until 80 now, and probably until I have her geared in exotics. Too close now to switch, but I do spend time daydreaming about other characters when not playing.
It should cost a lot less for me on the first one, even, because my Mesmer has been filling up my banking tab until it's overflowing.
Definitely sticking with my her until 80 now, and probably until I have her geared in exotics. Too close now to switch, but I do spend time daydreaming about other characters when not playing.
Abba San
Legacy of Elijah [LoE] - Proud Grandfather
Koeril is right on about the cost. I took my Warrior from lvl 29 to lvl 49 (just shy of 50) doing Jeweler and Weaponsmith. It didn't cost anywhere near 20 gold all together. I don't think I've had 20 gold total for my characters. I did a lot of Trading Post work - getting deals - selling items I made. I had hoped to get the two survivor levels doing it - but I only got the first level.
Koeril
New Member
At 80, you get ~180k xp per dungeon clear at the end of it. Don't sweat that achievement.
Abba San
Legacy of Elijah [LoE] - Proud Grandfather
This I didn't know...
Is that true?
Is that true?
Koeril
New Member
Yes, all xp is by % ... so your dungeon completion fill just as much % at level 30 as it does at level 80. It just happens to mean that at level 80, the actual number is higher because of the amount of xp needed. Same with crafting ... it's always the same %. I'm not sure how the xp works on killing mobs when down-leveled though. Do you earn levels just as fast in Queensdale as you do in Orr at level 80?
*edit* That seemed a bit opaque ... put it this way. You'll always earn 10 levels doing 1-400 crafting whether at level 10 or level 70. At level 10 this could take maybe 100k xp and at level 70 it could take 500k xp (not actual numbers!)
Basically, the numbers are only there to make you feel like you are accomplishing more.
*edit* That seemed a bit opaque ... put it this way. You'll always earn 10 levels doing 1-400 crafting whether at level 10 or level 70. At level 10 this could take maybe 100k xp and at level 70 it could take 500k xp (not actual numbers!)
Basically, the numbers are only there to make you feel like you are accomplishing more.
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I agree with Koeril.
for example;
when i do an event in the lv1-15 area on a lv25 character i get about 600 exp (depending on my amount of participation)
On my lv57 character i get about 2,176 exp (depending on my amount of participation)
Now my only problem is my alt (thief) is at the same level as my main (guardian) lol
i think thief might become my main..I am really enjoying it more than i thought.
im not sure the damage factor of the F1 steal but when im bored i hit it lol
for example;
when i do an event in the lv1-15 area on a lv25 character i get about 600 exp (depending on my amount of participation)
On my lv57 character i get about 2,176 exp (depending on my amount of participation)
Now my only problem is my alt (thief) is at the same level as my main (guardian) lol
i think thief might become my main..I am really enjoying it more than i thought.
im not sure the damage factor of the F1 steal but when im bored i hit it lol
Koeril
New Member
You have to trait "Mug" in order to get damage with steal. It can be pretty significant damage if you are in a crit build too. I find that the ooze is by far the best skill to steal providing you hit fast, followed by the spinning axe skill. In WvW when you steal from a certain class you are always guaranteed one of eight skills depending on the class. For example engies always give you the ooze (not as good in WvW as people move out of it, but good if you use it with an immobilize) and warriors always give the spinning axes. You can also trait steal to poison as well as do straight damage and gain a skill.
Main, secondary ... who cares if you are having fun!
Main, secondary ... who cares if you are having fun!