Monthly Archives: September 2020

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Equipping level 80’s

I’ve joined a GW2 forum on Facebook. It’s an interesting forum and I’m enjoying it. I see a fair number of players come through saying “do I boost to 80”, “how do I equip my 80”, “I can’t keep my 80 alive” and similar noob posts. We’ve all been there. Yup, every single one of us have danced that dance.

MetaBattle gives user-developed builds that are rated by other players. It appears only the fanatical players contribute builds to Metabattle . . . with few exceptions. One exception is the “basic staff ele” and “leveling summoner” builds for elementalists. The “leveling summoner” is full of lots of super helpful information for a new ele player.

So, given how much information is provided on builds in Megabattle, here’s my two cents worth. This advice is worth EXACTLY two cents. It’s JMPO.
No matter what you play, you have to develop a build you love to play. Read MetaBattle. See what others recommend. Read the notes, play with the build, change what you aren’t comfortable with . . . do what works FOR YOU. Don’t like the way the great sword plays? Try something else. Don’t like the stats they recommend? Try something else!
Here’s my example of lessons learned.
Elementalists are glass. They die very fast. VERY fast. Blink=dead. The first character I ever leveled was an elementalist. Poof, dead. She finished a lot of battles naked because she literally had no armor left to damage. I ran my first elementalist all the way through PoF, fully dressed in the recommended gear. By the end I was so frustrated I deleted her. Gone. Just like that.

That was over a year ago. I now have two elementalists and I LOVE them. They are SO fun to play. What did I do differently? Instead of equipping them in armor that gave them great DPS, I equipped one in all soldier (80 boost, power-toughness-vitaility) and the other in all ascended Tizlak (Commander, power-precision-toughness-concentration), armor chosen to offset how easily elementalists die.

Neither of these stat sets are huge dps producers, nor are they popular/recommended on MetaBattle. Putting them in soldier and commander stat sets was a test and I think, for me, it was a winner. My elementalist STAY ALIVE while I’m killing stuff.

In case you haven’t heard, you do exactly ZERO DPS when you’re dead. The goal is to not be dead. After that, it’s all selecting what you prefer.