Guild Wars 2

Pretty simple question:

What profession and build would you advise to a completely raiding noobie? Am I also understanding correctly you can choose the raid as well? If so, what raid would you advise?

Go meta if you are new. Meta tempest, PS war, viper necro, rev or druid

You should choose a profession that has non-crucial role, i.e. boon bot or damage bot. Those are warrior and revenant for boons; ele, thief and necro for damage. Out of these ele has the lowest survivability, so you should probably look more into the other ones.
The two professions you wanna stay away from are mesmer and ranger, their performance is what usually decides your fate and they absolutely need to know what to do and stay focused the whole time. As long as you play a non-crucial role, there’s very little chance of your group wiping because of you and any decent group should be able to carry you and make up for your mistakes.

As far as individual encounters go, McLeod (1st boss of wing 3) and Trio (2nd boss of wing 2) are considered to be the easiest and would be a good place to start at.

I certainly would not pick ele for beginners. Absolutely not. For two reasons. One, your survivability is extremely low. Ele is extremely unforgiving of mistakes. If you miss a green in VG or get hit by seekers – Dead. It’s high damage, high risk. Secondly, as an ele you will required to complete certain tasks with the raids. You will be asked to do orbs in Gors, which has a fair amount of pressure on it. You will have to do Greens on VG if you’re staff. Sabatha, you’ll no doubt be on cannons etc etc. All of these are very important to the success of the raid so, no not for beginners.

I wouldn’t choose Druid either because you will no doubt be the main healer. Again, not a role for noobs. If you are very familiar with it, Rev would be ok, as long as you are quick with break bars. I wouldn’t really advise Necro either. You need to be top at condi damage and again you will have tasks required of you. You will no doubt be on Greens for VG and you will be asked to snare a spirit in Gors and clear adds. Also you will use epidemic a lot and if you’re not confident with the range you can very easily kill your teammates in sloth and be very unpopular.

But for sheer lack of stress, go PS warrior. It’s always needed to the point some groups take two. Secondly you won’t be required to do anything specific except keep your might up and help with breakbars. You won’t do circles in VG, just watch for getting ported by blues if you’re in melee range. You won’t have to eat mushrooms in Sloth or snare a spirit in Gors. It’s basically place your banners and do your rotations as much as you can.

The other poster is right in advising you do the first encounter of Wing 3. It has a high success rate for newbies. Trio is ok, but it seems to be hard to find pugs looking for that specific encounter as most people who do SLoth tend to do trio quite quickly after. But tbh, if I was you, I would try and get practise in VG. It is rewarding, trains you well with mechanics and is probably still, the most common run boss. Plenty of access to training etc.

Well this would be my order:

Druid you need it in any group, they are always in demand and easy to play. Still doing a good job will get ya in groups and differentiate yourself.

PS warrior, most relaxing while being crucial to any group. Lots of PS warriors around and the easy learning curve makes it difficult to differentiate yourself.

Necro, easy to play but still offers plenty of room to differentiate yourself. Not popular in all fights though.

I started with revenant, but PS warrior should also be good for starting with raids. Both classes have not so much responsibility. Just giving boons, do damage and CC.

Once you know the mechanics and can handle them everything viable should be fine, even if some have more work to do then others.
Builds can be found on http://metabattle.com.
If you join a PUG, you’ll be expected to play a meta build.

The first encounter from wing 3 might be the most easy one, but everything is quiet easy, if your squad members know what to do

In order of importance to the raid and assigned roles in specific bosses, I recommend the following.

• Revenant / Warrior

Both generally get assigned to Mortars on Trio, Mushroom duty on Sloth, and timed bomb on Sabetha. Outside of that they stay in melee and punch things, which makes it pretty easy to pick up. Warriors have a more complex rotation than Revenant to both maintain might and do good damage, so the absolute easiest is Revenant.

• Guardian / Engineer

These are the odd classes out, but do offer some useful niche roles here and there. People like having a Guardian for Matthias for backup reflects and good DPS, while Engineer is great for VG due to extreme CC and great condition damage. Outside of that, these classes aren’t in extreme demand and thus when brought to other bosses typically don’t have many roles to work. They’re also middling in bulk and so don’t die easily.

• Thief / Necromancer

Both are incredibly bulky either through dodges or raw EHP, and are basic damage dealers. Thieves will get used on Sab cannons, both will hold Gors spirits depending on group composition, Necros will likely have to throw kegs at Narella in Trio, but otherwise there isn’t much here to worry about. These are fairly middling in difficulty, but on the lower end and aren’t that hard overall. The hardest part is the DPS rotation as little adjustments can make a big difference.

• Elementalist

Still in the damage dealer category, but harder than Thief and Necromancer due to added roles and reduced bulk. Elementalists will be clearing orbs at Gorseval, will be burning ice patches at Matthias, can be holding spirits at Gorseval, will be doing cannons at Sabetha, and will need to time invuls and blocks well to mitigate damage and stay alive against threatening bosses.

• Ranger / Mesmer

These are very difficult in different ways. Mesmer has to be able to time evades and blocks against extreme burst, and has to be able to provide quickness and alacrity with solid uptimes, and has to be able to move the toughness-based bosses effectively and know where to go and when. The Ranger, on the other hand, has in my opinion an equally difficult job at keeping people alive. While this shouldn’t be too bad in elite groups, in pubs your ability to pull off clutch plays will save runs or doom them depending on your skill. Both of these are the hardest roles in raids, and are not for new players.

Hopefully this all helps.

I’m yet another that would tag onto advising for Wing 3’s escort event as it follows very similar patterns to Open World escort meta events (as in NPC dies, event fails).

Are far as easiest class. I would have to say that decision is a little based on the encounter. Overall though PS Warrior, Guardians, and Revenents are the simplest to play and often are not tasked with critical roles (except Guard on Matthias). For the most parts those classes just need to worry about their rotations (and adapting when necessary) so they are more mentally freed up to learn the encounter.

Necro can be a mindless condi drone, but some encounters either don’t need them entirely, or they require something special from them. I would still say this class is on the easy spectrum though.

Ele and is also easy to play, but they often get tasked with encounter mechanics. So I would recommend Ele as a “second raid” toon if/when the player has gotten the gist of the encounter and wants to up their flexibility by taking on encounter roles (green circles, orbs, cannons, etc). Thief also falls under this category of easy to play, but that class also gets assigned tasks every now and then. Both Ele and Thief have the issue of being made of paper though so you might want to suggest a pillow for how often they’ll end up on the floor.

Druid and Mesmer are the only classes that I would not recommend to first timers. They commonly hold the healer and tank roles respectively and collectively have a large contribution to success of the team.

Note: I don’t play Engi nor does my group really make use of them so I have no idea where they fall on this list.

Simple answer :

Revenant : http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Herald_-_DPS/Support

This is by far the easiest class to play in raids from my experience. High survivability, easy rotation, high damage. The problem is though, raids pretty much only require one.

The rotation is easy to explain too.

Keep up facet of nature, use facet of elements on cooldown. Spam sword 1, use sword 2 on cooldown. Keep up other facets as needed for Fury, Regen, Protection.

For breakbars, use Axe 5, and then Staff 5.

That’s pretty much it.

Second would be:

PS Warrior :

This is a little harder to play than Revenant, but still really easy. Raids usually take two of these. Your goal is to keep might up. Seeing as Rev’s and Warriors can share ascended gear, I’d recommend making both if you can.

Next is :

Condi Necro : This takes a bit more skill because you usually have to take up some more complicated responsibilities. You have to time epidemics, kite mobs, run green circle in VG. It’s still 3rd easiest though.

…

Finally are Chrono, Elementalist, and Druid. The rotations and responsibilities of these classes make them somewhat stressful to play. Especially Elementalist in my opinion. Now that D/Wh has been nerfed, you need to use staff. The problem with staff is though that even though it’s long ranged, in order to get all the damage you need out of it, you are required to stay stationary. Combine that with the low survivability of the Ele, and you have a class that’s difficult to play.

Go meta build website, it tells you each proffesion what is the main duty and how etc. Watch videos POV of tht proffesuon on each raid bosses.
Don’t think of raids as dungeon run or fractal run. Its not intended to be run that way.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Raid
Read read read..
:p meta is good place to start

Ging.6485:

Simple answer :

Revenant : http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Herald_-_DPS/Support

This is by far the easiest class to play in raids from my experience. High survivability, easy rotation, high damage. The problem is though, raids pretty much only require one.

The rotation is easy to explain too.

Keep up facet of nature, use facet of elements on cooldown. Spam sword 1, use sword 2 on cooldown. Keep up other facets as needed for Fury, Regen, Protection.

For breakbars, use Axe 5, and then Staff 5.

That’s pretty much it.

Second would be:

PS Warrior :

This is a little harder to play than Revenant, but still really easy. Raids usually take two of these. Your goal is to keep might up. Seeing as Rev’s and Warriors can share ascended gear, I’d recommend making both if you can.

Next is :

Condi Necro : This takes a bit more skill because you usually have to take up some more complicated responsibilities. You have to time epidemics, kite mobs, run green circle in VG. It’s still 3rd easiest though.

…

Finally are Chrono, Elementalist, and Druid. The rotations and responsibilities of these classes make them somewhat stressful to play. Especially Elementalist in my opinion. Now that D/Wh has been nerfed, you need to use staff. The problem with staff is though that even though it’s long ranged, in order to get all the damage you need out of it, you are required to stay stationary. Combine that with the low survivability of the Ele, and you have a class that’s difficult to play.

Don’t forget Glint’s Elite for CC, and on Trio going Shiro and it’s elite on the Mortar guys… but yeah other than that what you said is basically it. More or less you’re there for the f2 skill and fury in glint. Beyond that you can do additional things but nothing you have to do (but should).

Jerus.4350:

Don’t forget Glint’s Elite for CC

This should only be used as a last resort. Revs should keep 100% protection uptime on the group unless the group is skilled enough to go without it. Axe 5 and Staff 5 are usually sufficient.

i wish revenant was more in demand, as well as engineer.

Revenant are really fun, easy rotation, and great for beginners. But as said above, eveeryone suggests warriors — why?

Secondly, engineers need to be given something to make them desirable to bring, given their very difficult rotation. It should be rewarding in some way.

Malpractice.7850:

Secondly, engineers need to be given something to make them desirable to bring, given their very difficult rotation. It should be rewarding in some way.

Higher toughness bosses/enemies with nothing to epidemic bounce off of favors Engineer heavily right now, those just don’t really exist in the current raid. Maybe once ANet does whatever they plan to do with Epidemic (who knows) we’ll see more Engineers.

Also, Revenant gets used in basically every raid group. That’s pretty high in demand IMO!

Rising Dusk.2408:

Malpractice.7850:

Secondly, engineers need to be given something to make them desirable to bring, given their very difficult rotation. It should be rewarding in some way.

Higher toughness bosses/enemies with nothing to epidemic bounce off of favors Engineer heavily right now, those just don’t really exist in the current raid. Maybe once ANet does whatever they plan to do with Epidemic (who knows) we’ll see more Engineers.

Also, Revenant gets used in basically every raid group. That’s pretty high in demand IMO!

I miss my engi, thats such a fun rotation :-) Sucks.

I guess, im more asking, why does everyone recommend warrior instead of Rev?