Guild Wars: PvE Beginner Tips

Another day, another painful pick-up group. It still never ceases to amaze me that people can get this far into the game and still have no idea how to play. Elona Reach is not even a hard mission - unlike Thirsty River which is significantly trickier - but the group was so bad that it wasn't even close.

Just in case you're just starting out, here's some beginner tips for PvE. The group I just had managed to get every single one of these wrong.

• It's a good idea to fight as few enemies as possible. If there's a bunch of monsters all together comprised of more than one group, wait till the groups separate. Get someone with a longbow to shoot one of the monsters then run away so they'll follow. If they don't follow, shoot them again till they do. You don't care about damage at this point, all that matters is making sure you don't aggro everything at once. It doesn't have to be a Ranger - in fact, you should be carrying a longbow just for this no matter what your class. This basic technique is known as "pulling". For everyone else in the group, wait for the monsters to come to you, don't run to the monsters.
  
• If someone draws a line on the minimap perpendicular to your path, that means "don't go over the line".
• Keep an eye on the minimap. If you see something coming up behind the group, ping it on the minimap so other people realise - not everyone is alert.
• If you're playing a Warrior, you normally want to be up front attracting aggro since you have more armour. Once everything is dead, don't run on into the next group of monsters until you're reasonably sure that your casters have energy and there's no ambushing patrol about to gank the rear of your party.
• Bring a self-heal if possible - e.g. Healing Signet - it'll take a lot of the load off your monk and if the monk dies you might make it out alive.
• Bring a resurrection spell of some kind to missions - Resurrection Signet if you're not a monk primary or secondary. If you're the last one alive after a disaster, you'll be really glad you did. If you are a monk, Rebirth isn't a bad choice because it's good for disaster recovery. Pretty bad for resurrecting in mid-battle but things have already gone pear-shaped if you're doing that.
  
• If you're a Warrior or Ranger, don't use expensive spells from your secondary class. Your energy regeneration will suck compared with the primary casters so you're better off leaving that stuff to them.
  

Sadly, I suspect that posting this is a bit pointless. I suspect a lot of the worse players I've had in pick-up groups don't read anything anyway - so if you made it this far you're already ahead of the curve.

Tags: gaming, guild wars, PvE