Guild Wars 2

Lots o’ text here, but I tried to format it into a list to make things easier, so here we go.

I’ve got an 80 Mesmer (first character, pretty much just use him for PvP now) and an 80 Thief (just hit 80 yesterday and I consider her my PvE main). I like my Shatterburst build for PvP (though I don’t PvP often), and I love playing my Thief with a D/D crit build – dodging a lot, crit backstabs, lots of mobility. Fun fun.

I have 8 character slots, and thanks to those nifty leveling scrolls, I have one character of every class at least at level 20 (though I haven’t necessarily played all of them to level 20).

Engineer (Played to ~10ish, then scrolled to 20)

- I like the idea of kits, being able to swap to many different “weapons” without having to get actual weapons or keep them in my inventory

- Grenade kit is pretty fun

- Flamethrower kit is pretty fun

- Pretty much nothing else about the class interests me at all besides those two kits

- As cool as grenades and flamethrowers look, combat with them is still rather slow and clunky (especially comparing to my Thief)

Necromancer (Played to 27)

- Like the idea of an AoE condition damage build

- Like the idea of being hard to kill despite being a cloth class

- At level 27, not feeling the above two points at all (my damage is decent, but I’m definitely squishy as hell and die easily when fighting more than 1-2 enemies)

- Not really interested in any builds besides AoE condition damage

Elementalist (Played to 30)

- Always a fan of fire-and-lightning mages

- Staff spells are pretty great

- Scepter/Dagger spells seem more powerful, but not quite as fun

- Don’t like the single weapon thing

- Don’t like how the trait trees all say “Stay in this attunement!” but actual combat says “Swap attunements all the time!”

- Entirely possible that I’m just not good enough at stance-dancing and knowing abilities to be good, but I’ve also heard quite a few people say that Elementalists are just weak overall

- Basically a case of “I don’t know why I’m not enjoying this class, because I should, and I want to – but I’m not”

Ranger (Played to 20 in beta weekends, have not played in live at all)

- Pretty enjoyable when I played one in beta, went with longbow

- Like the idea of being able to find cool pets

- Playing a pure ranged non-mage would be a nice change of pace from Thief/Mesmer

- Fear that it’d get boring quick just shooting arrows all the time

- Don’t see the appeal in using anything but a bow

Warrior (Played a bit in beta, have not played in live)

- Like the idea of being able to swap between a greatsword/hammer smashyface guy and a sword/shield tank on the fly

- All my other characters are light/medium armor, have yet to play a heavy armor class

- Not as flashy as classes like Elementalist, Thief, Mesmer

- Despite all the weapon choices, not really interested in any of them besides greatsword, hammer, rifle, and 1-hander/shield

Guardian (Have not played at all)

- Never really been interested in this class in the slightest, don’t know much about them other than they can be casters or warrior-ish, have lots of CC, and lots of boon abilities. Not interested in the flavor or aesthetic, not interested in the gameplay.

Go Warrior.
If youre ruling out Guardian, you leave Warrior as the only viable Heavy option.
Warrior was my first to 80 and Guardian was the profession i left to last.

I’d recommend trying a heavy class, if only because you have a light and a medium already. It might make for a nice change of pace to be able to stand there and soak up damage for a change.

Staff Ele is my absolute favorite, but if it’s just not clicking with you, there’s no sense forcing it. Ranger might be an all right alternative; all-range might get dull, but Longbow/Greatsword is pretty fun to play, for me.

Warrior is hard to lose with, except you stated something about “boring”. I don’t specifically think its boring, but it does get pretty repetitive if you just follow the handful of preferred specs. It seemed pretty easy to me to level and get into things. Leveled mostly with Longbow for the neat combo field and because GS was too mainstream (I’m not a hipster, but my warrior totally is)

Norn Engineer was LOTS of fun, but nade targeting got old. Leveled with bombs to get 80, which got a nice boost a while back.. Really honestly wanted nades to be my bread and butter (and underwater its fully targeted and OP) I still FT/EG for above the water AoE fun, but I’m not looking to break any dps records and mostly use him for trains… He knows how to cook some bacon.

Char Necro, I leveled as a wellmancer and it probably was the fastest character I made to 80. Agro lots of stuff, spawn your wells/marks, loot and continue. I repeatedly tested my boundaries as to how much I could AoE successfully and ended up “surfing” the edge between up and downed states. To be honest, although I hit 80, I haven’t really played him much at max level. I planned to go full condi with him (which shines at 80), but decided I wanted a better all arounder and invested my money into my mes

Guardian was my first love. Asuran. Tiny, but brick-kittenhouse effective. I rolled this class because my friends told me I’d be wanted in groups and there were supposed to be really powerful. Rolled the original AH build until that got nerfed. I suppose they are still powerful, but aside from slinging around on my GS, I never really got good at playing it and wanted something with more range options.

Ele – played to 30… never found a race/gender/theme combo that I wanted to play with it, but to be honest, I only tried rolled asura and syvari… couldn’t get used to the techno-babble in regards to magic and… /sigh… tree children. Might roll another one at some point, but with both a mes and a necro already maxed, I don’t have much need for another clothie.

Thief – played to 30. I inevitably hit a wall with the energy system and picking one or two things to spam. That, and I really want my Thief to use BOTH weapons to auto attack. It urks me to see a perfectly good pistol or sword offhand just hang there… on another class, sure, but a thief should be one impressive dual wielder with their auto attack. I’m just sayin.

Ranger – played to 20. after next week… maybe I’ll pick it back up. Depends on how much of a boost they get. Part of the reason I went Warrior LB was to have “hunter ranged weapons” + good damage, survivability and no pets needed for max dps. This was one of the classes I most wanted to like, but just couldn’t get into before. It might be worth a second look.