There are basically 3 types of quests in GW2.

1)  Personal story, much like your class quest in TOR. This is logged in a quest log so you always know what stage you are on and can go do it at any time.

2)  Hearts quests (these show up as a heart on the world map) it’s basically a quest giver who is always there and provides an “area quest.”  Any player in the area can help him with what he needs.   ie, rats are eating his crops, kill 10 rats.   Now his crops need to be watered, get 10 buckets of water.   Now that his crops are growing nicely rats are eating his crops, kill 10 rats, repeat, repeat.  No quest log.

3) Dynamic quests.  These change depending on what’s going on in the world, and are generally chained.    Ie, bandits are attacking, kill 10 bandits.  Bandit attack has been defeated, go to the bandit camp and capture the leader.  Bandit leader has been captured, and interrogated, he was hired by a rival town.  Go to rival town under the control of a dragon, slay dragon.   Chain ends.   Days pass.   Bandits attacking town agian.   No quest log.

PVP

There are two types of PVP, instanced and WvWvW

1) No true open world PVP. No getting ganked while leveling.

2) Instanced, balanced battle grounds, you are upleveled to max level (80), nothing new here.

3) WvWvW, you are upleveled to max level (80), 3 servers fight in a massive battle for control of objectives, you take resource camps which provide supply.

1. this is a PVE/PVP zone there are pve oppontents (guards, keep lords, etc)
2. supply camps provide supply for keeps a keep with no supply cant repair walls/doors  and is much easier to take.
3. Supply camps are designed to be taken by 5 man group.
4. every few minutes you gain points based on what you control, 5 pts for supply camps, 25 for keeps, 50 for castles, etc.
5. Winning provides buffs for everyone on your server
6. games reset after 2 wks, servers are matched based on ELO ranking, winners fight winners, etc.
7. loot drops and xp from PVP kills, but actual level appropriate.  You are level 12, but bolstered to 80, level 12 loot drops.

PVE content scaling

All PVE content scales for level and/or level scales for content.

1) if you return to do your class quest at level 80 you will be de-leveled to the appropriate level.

2) if you are level 50 and group with a level 15 friend in a level 15 zone you will be de-leveled to 15, but still get xp as if you were level 15.

3) all pvp zones up level you to 80, but this is just base stats, you are still weaker because of missing gear and skills.    You can start to pvp at level 2.

4) Public quests scale based on number of players participating.  Quest requires killing 5 rats to complete, 10 players show up, now it requires killing 50 rats.

5) you are only upleveled for PVP not PVE.   PVE is “tutorial mode”

Dungeons.

Two dungeon modes, story and exploration

1) Story mode is easy with lots of lore and conversations.

2) Exploration mode (hard mode) much harder.   You must beat story mode to do exploration mode.   More dynamic,  ie sometimes the bosses are different.  No cutscenes.

Combat

Trinity is gone

1) Tank and healing/support are play styles not roles.  Much like in a MOBA or FPS a group of all DPS is viable.  Think League of Legends Online.

2) Dodge telegraphed attacks and dont stand in the fire are not just boss mechanics, but PVP and leveling mechanics too.

Trade skills

1) Disassemble junk gear in the field for components.

2) Anyone can harvest resources, no special skills needed

At first I was like...

And then I was all....

It’s the little bugs that get me.

Gharj
Gharj (hard mode)
Gharj (nightmare mode)
Infernal council
Infernal council
Infernal council

Why you no tell me nightmare mode?

There are four damage types: Kinetic, Energy, Internal, Elemental. The first two are mitigated by armor, the latter two are not.

There are also four attack types: Melee, Ranged, Force, Tech. You can consider the first two to be “weapon attacks” and the second two to be “spells”  It’s not always clear which is which by the tooltip, but when you use them weapon attacks will show up as white numbers, spells as yellow.

Attack type and damage type have no correlation, you can have any combination of the two sets (though not all combination exist in game). The first two are subject to defense (avoidance) and shield (partial mitigation), the latter two are subject to resistance. Resistances (which are just avoidance for Force and Tech attacks) are present as a mechanic, but very very few effects in the game grant them, so they can essentially be ignored.  Weapon damage, unless otherwise stated, is kinetic or energy damage.

Thus you can very easily have an attack that bypasses armor yet can be dodged or shielded (an internal melee attack, for example), or an attack that bypasses defense and shield yet is armor mitigated (an energy force attack, for example).

Here’s a handy chart.

From this it should be clear that spells that do internal/elemental damage will ignore most of the defenses of tanks.

Weapon damage attack start with a base 90% chance to hit and spells start with 100% chance.  According to the description accuracy improves this for both and defense reduces it.  This is slightly misleading because you’d think that someone with a high defense of say 30% could avoid many spells, but that is not true, in PvP spells always hit.

What this means is that if you can minimize the number of weapon attacks in your rotation the affect of accuracy is next to nil.  The same way someone who uses only instant attacks is unaffected by alacrity.  Also using only spells against tanks eliminates the effect of their shield generator.

PVP gear is covered with accuracy, however it is usually in the enhancement slot.   By replacing these enhancements with other more useful stats you can greatly increase  your effectiveness.

What stats to use?

Things that increase your percent chance to do something have a cap.

Stat Caps:
Surge: 50%
Crit: 30%
Alacrity: 30%
Shield: 50%
Absorption: 50%
Expertise: 20%

This is for your stat rating.   For example, the max crit rating you can have is 30%, but you have a 5% base chance to crit.  If you have talents that increase crit chance by 9% and  the smuggler/agent buff that gives an additional 5% you can have 49% crit chance.

Your primary stats (aim/strength/cunning/willpower) and endurance do not have a cap.   Neither does the secondary stat of power.

Because the variety of high level mods is extremely limited I find myself stacking things like crit and surge to near cap without really trying, simply because there is nothing else available.  That  is why, when in doubt, I always go for power as a secondary stat.

See you all at launch!

http://www.torhead.com/calculator/skill#800bfMZMIkrRrdoksz.1

PvE DPS

http://www.torhead.com/calculator/skill#800McZMIkbRrdokfzZf.1

Healing

http://www.torhead.com/calculator/skill#800rfRMRzfdzqZMcoZb.1