Guild Wars for World of Warcraft Players

Basic Game Mechanics

Instead of dividing up the world into different servers and having each server continuously run a whole world, guild wars has all characters in the same world, and uses "districts" to seperate them. In towns, each character is allowed to be in any of its home districts (american, europian, etc.), as well as international districts. Outside of town, each zone is instanced, similar to raids or dungeons in world of warcraft, except that the entire group must be in the same area, if one person changes zones, everyone ends up switching zones along with them. Zones reset when left, so it is impossible to clear the monsters from a zone, exit, and than return again without fighting the monsters all over again. However, because of this, there is no spawning of monsters, so once part of a zone is cleared, it is cleared for as long as players remain in it.

Unlike world of warcraft, only 8 skills can be carried out at a time, these skills can't be switched unless the character is in town. When casting spells, regular damage does not slow the spell down in any way, but interrupting skills can stop it completely. Traps laid by rangers are interrupted completely by any attacks, unless special skills are used. Weapons are guarenteed to hit unless certain hexes or conditions are on the attacker, or certain stances or enchantments used on the defender. Skill with weapons comes from raising it's associated attribute (ax, sword, hammer, dagger mastery for those weapons, marksmanship for bows), character level, and the actual weapon damage. Wands and staffs do not have associated attributes, so if the requirement is met, damage is based simply on character level and weapon damage.

Defense is provided by armor. All characters at the same level have almost the same hitpoints, efffected only by runes and enchantments, and all characters of a certain primary class have the same amount of mana through all levels, unless certain armor types, weapons, and enchantments are used ot increase it. Armor level, unless described as "armor vs. fire" for example, allplies to all damage except holy, life stealing, and various mesmer spells. Regeneration and degeneration from poisons or hexes cause a constant amount of life lost or gained per second for each arrow, and is not effected by anything.

The different areas are designed for groups of 4 to 8 people, so one character will 99% of the time not be able to handle an area by themselves, unless specially designed for certain areas. Henchmen added in town can, in most areas, do a fine job of getting characters through, though in some missions it is important to have other humans to help out. Because the player groups are larger, monster groups fought are often larger as well, and players can fight from 3-8 or so monsters at a time in areas their level, depending on how powerful the monsters are.

The aggro systme in guild wars, instead of depending on who does the most damage oand/or taunts the most, depends on who the monster saw first, who appears weakest, and who the monster can reach. Monsters will at first go for whoever enters their aggro area first, but if a target with weaker armor and/or more death penalty comes in, the monster will switch targets. If this is a close combat monster that is blocked, it will switch targets back to whoever it can reach. Monsters will also move to attack a player who attacks them, though the same rules apply afterwards as with entering the aggro circle.

Equipment

Armor

Armor comes either from crafters or from collectors. Armor collectors, like weapon, shield, or focus collectors, take various drops from monsters and give armor pieces in return. Armor crafters require money and materials, and will give pieces of armor in return. No armor drops from monsters. The armor offered in Kaineng city, House zu Heltzer, and Cavalon (for factions) or Droknar's Forge (for prophecies) has the best stats of any armor available, though fissure armor and various other armors are more expensive and require more materials, they are have the same statistics as the Droknars/Kaineng city armor. Because the maximum level armor requires a lot of materials, it is a good idea to salvage any "salvage items" throughout the game, and possibly other ones, as this is usually cheaper and easier than buying the required materials.

Collector armor depends on the area it comes from, the most advanced collector armor has the same armor level as the armor crafters from the cities mentioned previously, but does not have bonuses that come on some types of armor. In many cases, this is not a problem, and collector armor works fine for many people.

Armor types depend on the primary class and can't be used by any player other than the one who first got it. All armor has a certain armor level depending on primary class, certain mana bonuses depending on primary class, and, depending on the type of armor, can have certain bonuses beyond that.

Weapons

Weapons can either come from monster drops, or from collectors. Although there are special "green" weapons that come from certain boss monsters, these weapons are not particularily more powerful than collector weapons with maximum damage/armor/mana bonuses. Collector weapons, focuses, and shields are probably the easiest way to get these pieces of equipment, so after reaching Kaineng city (for factions) or in th desert/south shiverpeaks (for prophecies), it is a good idea to save non salvage monster drops, as those can often be used to get collector weapons.

Weapons reuirements are simply the amount of a certain attribute below which the weapon will do far less damage, or focus will give far less mana. The weapon or focus can still be equipped and used, just not as effectively.

In general in guild wars, it is mouch easier to get high powered item than in world of warcraft, and differences in the high end items are far less important.

Character Developement

PvE characters have a maximum level of 20, which is reached around 2/3 of the way through the story for prophecies characters, and 1/3 for factions characters. The power of all skills is based off of attributes, so instead of buying different ranks of skills, and using talents to improve them, characters will buy the skill or get the skill from a quest, and if they want to use it, put points in the associated attribute to make it more powerful. Weapon skills, as described above, either come from the associated attribute for physical weapons, or are just have attribute requirements for magical weapons. Crafting/gathering skills do not exist, and similar functions are done by salvage kits and NPC crafters. skills such as dodging and blocking do not exist either, these only occur from skills, with none of these in effect, all attacks will hit.

Skills seem later on in the game are not necessarily more powerful than earlier skills, just possiby more complicated to use.

Attributes and skills can be rearranged any time for free in town, so if a person decides, for example, to switch from a minion summoning necromancer to a curses necromancer, they can do so easily as long as they have gotten the curse skills from somewhere. Laterin the game, secondary professions can be swithced, but the cost of buying skills for this professions and the time to relearn how to play the charactercan make this a hard change to do.

Although all professions can play just fine using just their primary attribtes, more interesting characters can oftne be made when the secondary class is used. Some primary and secondary professions have useful skill interactions, so consider this when picking a secondary profession.

Character Classes

Warrior

In guild wars, warrior primaries perform the similar jobs as in world of warcraft, tanking and doing close combat damage. Warriors in PvE areas can attract monster attention by either being the first in their aggro area, or blocking close combat monsters from moving to attack the weaker characters behind. Warriors, because of how attributes work, will mostly pick either a hammer, sword, or ax and stick with it through and area. Because warrior primary armor leaves them with little mana regeneration and little mana, they most often use seconadry professions just to support either their damage dealing or damage absorption, and use long lasting, low cost spells.

Warrior Secondaries often play very differently than warrior primaries because of their lower armor and higher mana. Secaondaries either use tactics skills for extra combat support, or use close combat weapons but try to avoid taking most of the damage when a warrior primary is around. Ranger/warriors can play similarily to warrior primaries because rangers also have high armor, and their expertise attribute adds useful stances for defense.

Adrenaline, unlike rage, is charged up seperately for each skill instead of being a sinble number. When a warrior adrenal skill is fully charged, it cannot gain any more adrenaline until it is used and the adrenaline put back up again. A warrior skill looses all it's adrenaline when used, while other adrenal skills loose a strike. Warrior attacks can be use either adrenaline or mana.

Assasins

Assasins are similar to rogues in that they do lots os close combat damage and have mid level armor, but instead of stealth, assasins use teleports and a few defensive stances and skills.

Assasins are extremely fragile in PvE, their armor is equivalent to ranger armor in all areas except elemental, but they are fighting on the front lines, so are often the targets of monsters that normally would attack warriors. They are also more easily caught by area attacks. Assasin primares or secondaries using daggers will likely use the secondary professions for some defensive skills, as assains don't have a lot. Thy can do large amounts of damage very quickly to monsters, using chained attacks and critical hits.

Ranger/assasins with daggers and expertise play similarily to assasin primaries, though with better armor vs. elemental damage and less chance of critical hits. Otherwise, there isn't a lot of experience with seconadry assasins using daggers. Assasins also have several useful hexes and teleports, which can be used by all classes effectively.

Rangers

Rangers use similar skills to hunters in world of warcraft, with bow attacks, traps, some stances, and other pet skills. Rangers can as often end up as support characters as damage dealers, they can interrupt spellcasters well and add conditions well. Rangers have the highest armor against elemental damage, and are medium against anything else.

Pets have far less controls in guild wars than in world of warcraft. In guild wars, if you attack something the pet attacks it. If something attacks you and you aren't fighting, the pet will attack it. This makes it harder for rangers with pets to pull than in world of warcraft. Pet health, armor, and damage depends on the beast mastery attribute, and can sometimes be changed with pet skills. most pet skills, though, are attacks which do similar things as other attack skills.

More than one trap can be placed by a ranger in quild wars. Some ranger builds are designed simply for trapping, to either do damage, cripple, or control certain areas. Traps are easy to interrupt, any attack will do so unless certain skills are used.

Preperations effect all arrows for a certain amount of time. They can add damage, cause conditions that, and/or interrupt.

Ranger primaries can use most skills from all secondary professions effectively. The expertise attribute can be useful for warriors and assasin in reduceing attack costs, and rangers have enough mana to use most caster spells fine. They can't, however, use very high mana cost spells or spam spells effectively.

Ranger secondaries can also work well with all professions. Rangers have two skills that reduce cooldown time, pets are slways useful as extra damage absorbers or dealers, stances are useful for warriors and assasins, and bows can be used from range by casters.

Necromancers

Necromancers are a combination of diablo 2 necromancers and World of warcraft warlocks. Blood magic has similar spells to the life stealing or sacrificing affliction spells. Curses follow from the name. Death magic spells include diablo style minion summoning giving large groups of undead fighters, and it alkso includes direct damage spells and other corpse using spells.

For PvE necromancers, soul reaping means they will over a fight gain a lot of energy to use. for minion summoners, sould reaping is very important to suommon large groups of minions, as the summoning spells are expensive. it is useful for other necromancers as well, they will often have plenty of energy to use spells.

A single necromancer (or any other hex using character) can apply more than one curse to an enemy at the same time, the only limit is that only one curse of it's type may be applied to a single enemy. For exapmle, if a single necromancer brings both faintheartedness and parasitic bond, they will be able to use both curses on a single monster. If another necromancer comes and uses shadow of fear on the moneter, no curse will be removed. If another necromancer uses faintheartedness before the first diesppears on it's own, the first one will get replaced.

Necromancer primaries and secondaries can do most of the same things, except for minion summoning. because of the high cost of minions, and the need to keep their levels as high as possible, sould reaping is very important to have enough energy for summoning. Soul reaping supplies a lot of energy, so sometimes necromancer primaries will use their secondary class for most skills, and use soul reaping to keep their energy high.

Ritualists

Ritualists are the guild wars hybrid class, though rangers also do a lot of different things. Channeling offers a lot of direct damage spells, Communing has offensive and defensive spirits that do most roles, and restoration has healing and protection spells.

Ritualist spirits in general take long times to summon, and have long cooldown times. Their closest equivalent in world of warcraft is shaman totems. A riauslist can summon as many spirits as wanted, but only on spirit of a certain type can be summoned by a team, which means that if a team has two ritualists, and they both summon a restoration spirit, one of the spirits will be destroyed. Spirits tend to take damage easily, even with a high amount of points in spawning power, so it is important to keep the spirits back and spread them out. Monsters will often shift target from the ritualist to the spirit.

Weapons spells are sort of like enchantments, except they can't be removed be enemy players, and only one weapon spell can be on a player at a time. Weapon spells also have a number of different effects, from life stealing to blocking attack to adding damage, and more.

Ritualist primaries can use other caster skills fine, though there hasn't been enough experience with warriors or assasins to say anything there. Ritualist primaries are the only class that has a lot of minion summoners, their spawning power attribute increases minion life, and has a number for skills for reducing energy cost and dealing damage with minions. Ritualist secondaries that use spirits will need to keep them from being attacked, otherwise they work fine as well.

Monks

Monks fill a similar role to priests, though with less crowd control. healing and protection prayers skillsdo as described, while smiting prayers deal direct damage or increase some other character's damage.

Most monks by far use healing or protection prayer skills. Smiting skills are fine for dealing damage, but because most parties need healers of some sort, there are few other healing classes, none as good as monks, and direct damagers come from other classes, monks are most often played in these roles. Smiters are more common in PvP than PvE.

Divine favor gives primary monks better healing than most other classes. Since most monk spells target allieas, a high divine favor attribute gives a lot of free healing. Ritualists can also heal well, but usually not in as large amounts as monks. Monks are also the most common hex and condition reomvers.

Secondary monks often have different healing styles, if the skills are used, because of the lack of divine favor. Warrior/monks usemonk spells mostly on themselves, and can combine warrior skills and monk skills to survive very well under attack. Necromancer/monks and elementalist/monks can have a lot more energy for healing than primary monks, from soul reaping and energy storage. Monk smiting skills can be used by rangers, warriors, and assasins to improve damage. Mesmer fast casting is useful for some monk skills as well.

Mesmer

Mesmers have no equivalents in world of warcraft. They are sort of like a combination of spellbreakers and sorceresses in warcraft 3. Mesmers tend to often be anti-caster characters by interrupting, taking away energy, and increasing casting times, but theycan also counter other character types, cause degeneration, and have useful stances.

Domination skills incluce some interrupts, a couple skills that remove energy and cause damage from it, hexes that cause damage on spellcasting or attacking, and some hex and enchantment removal skills that cause damage. Illusion skills contain hexes that cause degeneration, conditions, lengthen cast times, cause slower movement to enemies, and some skills that improve allies or the caster. Inspiration skills mostly focus on mana or defensive stances of some sort. Inspirations skills are oftne similar to domination skills, though instead of causing damage, they gain the caster mana or life. Inspiration stances are often used on secondary mesmers for added defense, or other effects.

Mesmer secondaries and primaries can do similar things. Fast casting for a lot of skills is more convienience than other primary attributes, but it is useful for preventing interruptions or getting in hexes before monsters to things the hexes counter. Interruption mesmer, however, gain a lot from fast casting, as some spells cast very quickly, and along with reaction times the faster casting is needed to get the interrupt in before the enemy spell finishes. Mesmer skills often require certain conditions to be met to reach their full effectiveness, so combining with a primary or secondary class that causes those conditions can be helpful.

Elementalist

Elementalists are similar to mages in that they have lots of high damage magical spells with some support and crowd control, but the crowd control comes from wards and some hexes rather than polymorph type spells.

Elementalist energy storage is the only way besides weapons to increase maximum energy on character. Energy storage is important for some high cost elementalist spells such as meteor shower. A meteor shower on a mesmer primary will reduce it's energy by a huge percentage, both from the actual cost as well as exhaustion, while on an elementalist with high energy storage it doesn't loose too large a fraction of its energy.

Because of the larger groups that are fought in guild wars, elementalists with lots of good area effect spells should bring more of them.

Elementalist secondaries can have energy trouble with the wrong spells, as a lot of elementalist spells are very expensive, but some spells aren't too costly and are useful suppport skills. elementalist primaries work fine with most secondaries except warrior (possibly assasin).