Guild Wars 2

Howdy, guys. My wife and I bought the Guild Wars 2 expansion. My only problem thus far, is that I can’t figure out what class to play. We have both played World of Warcraft (among many other mmos) for years now.

I normally play Druids in just about any rpg that I can, or atleast the closest that I can to it. (Like how they took out Druids from the Dragon Age series, so now I gotta play Keepers and Knight Enchanters.). I played all 4 specs pretty regularly, although Feral most commonly.

My wife plays Bow classes in almost all rpgs now. Elemental bow classes, if she can, but a normal bow will do.

Now, I know that there is a Druid spec added to the game with the expansion. This caught my attention. My wife has already jumped on the Ranger, being that it is close to the Hunter class that she loves.

Will groups turn us away if we are Both Rangers at end game? Even with me being mostly Melee or Staff heals, while she stays with mostly (if not all) ranged bow? Or would I be better off picking a different class? Is there a class that is better suited for me that will be somewhat familiar? Thanks all.

consider the races too. go norn elementalist or ranger and have her aim for ranger(if you’re ele) or dragonhunter(guardian) which uses bow.

norn because they’re more attuned to nature. sylavari are cool like that too, but norns have diff animal spirits etc.

as for pugs, two ranger may or may not be kicked(elitists) but a good guild wont care. honestly everyone ends up making multiple of everything.

i assume you’ll be working together a lot so id advise two diff classes for more variety and synergy. also even if shes a bow ranger, you’re not taking advantage of mechanics if you’re a bow war or ranger and that’s all you use. even if 100% anti melee she’ll be using staff for quick buffs/heals or sword/warhorn(swiftness/dodges), etc. if your class uses two weapon sets roll with it. note: you can spec towards 1 main weapon, but the utilities from 2nd can save the day.

as for end game it depends on how you define that. anet doesn’t. for some it’s pvp/wvw/fractals/raids/dungs etc. for some it’s story and fashion. some of the stuff mayy require a certain group composition. neat thing about that is you can make yourr own group for say… dungeons or raids through LFG feature or Guild. will it be sucessful? well, that’s the fun part.

Thanks for the reply. Norn was a great tip, we both decided to go Norn, due to them being more nature themed. Elementalist might not be a bad idea. I do like the melee ranger pretty well, but I don’t like the idea of us getting kicked from groups for having 2 rangers in one group.

Classes in GW2 aren’t like that. They aren’t divided up by “ranged class, magic class, melee class”, or “Tank, heal, DPS”. Each class was designed so that they can all function a multitude of ways. And as such, what groups will turn away really depends on how that particular group feels.

In general, if you want the best performance out of a class, you’ll want to be using melee skills whenever possible. Hanging back and just ranging with the bow is really limiting. The two best classes for damage at range are the elementalist and the guardian elite spec Dragonhunter, but in general to share buffs and heals you’ll all be standing close to each other and meleeing whenever possible.

If you’re just going for the nature theme, two rangers are fine. In a raid, however, to be let into a group one of you will have to be a healer, while the other probably a condi ranger.

updated post to clarifyy more. sorry hard to type, brroken mechanical keyboard atm.

Mesmer

Mesmer seems closer to a Arcane Mage to me, to put it in WoW terms. But I could be wrong about that. Anway, thank you for all of the replies, guys!

XBgyManX.7018:

Thanks for the reply. Norn was a great tip, we both decided to go Norn, due to them being more nature themed. Elementalist might not be a bad idea. I do like the melee ranger pretty well, but I don’t like the idea of us getting kicked from groups for having 2 rangers in one group.

best way to avoid anything like that is join a guild of like minded people. might take a couple trial and error but it’s the best thing you can do. pugs can be ok, pugs can be you worst niightmare, just like iin other mmo.

most of the content in the game can be pugged with nearly anything orr just open world mobbed on(world bosses, events etc). if you want the all access pass to ever corner, join a decent guild and mic up, it’s so much better.

Rangers are the red headed step child of the game that have been riddled with bad design decisions and unwarranted nerfs throughout their history. It took a massive outcry and giant forum CDI thread just to get them somewhat up to par. That said luckily healing Druids have carved out a niche in raids and condi Ranger supposedly is second to Engineer.

Check out the cultural armor. Also make sure you like how Norn run. Personally I don’t like how “slow” it feels running as a norn but that’s just me. If there is any tier 3 cultural armor you really like that might also determine your choice.

So for classes. This really comes down to what you want to do. “End game” right now is fractals and raids if you mostly PvE. PvP and WvW can also be viewed as endgame. In pvp and WvW you can pull off any class okay. Ranger actually isn’t a bad class for those game modes as they take a little less skill to play and be decent. Though to get good at pvp/WvW you really need to learn all class mechanics which means playing each class which you will probably end up doing eventually.

Now for PvE. Currently ranger is okay. It’s definitely not on or near the top of most desired classes. 1 Druid is pretty much required for raids from what a majority of the community currently thinks. Granted raids are new and things could change with that but it seems 1 Druid per raid is going to stay. As far as fractals go a Druid isn’t bad but I wouldn’t be so sure people would like both a Druid in combination with another Druid or ranger. You would most likely run into issues with that unless you make your own groups and don’t mind waiting and extra 10-30 minutes.

But really I encourage you to try out a few classes. Game play in gw2 is dramatically different than other games. All the classes have a different feel to them. Some have fast rotations that you have to really focus on managing and other have more laid back rotations. Most classes have a unique mechanic or two that they bring to the table that other classes don’t bring. Some classes have a higher skill level and can contribute a lot more when the player achieves the higher skill level (plus it’s fun when you can do that). Also just want to let you know a lot of PvE requires both range and melee. Melee for the most part does more damage. So even as a ranger you don’t want to range all the time or in stuff like raids you’re going to really lack DPS. Anyway I’m writing too much. Good luck to you guys tho.

How about berserker for your wife?

Condition berserker’s ideal state is using longbow 100% of the time to inflict significant amounts of burning.

It’s probably the closest you’ll get to an elemental archer (Other than some kind of ice bow elementalist, but they’re very limited due to how conjured weapons work)

Hey, guys. Thanks again for the replies. A ranged warrior build? I didn’t even think about that. I will tell her about it.

Two Rangers in a party is completely fine, especially if one of them is a Druid. Any party that would kick you guys for that is a party you wouldn’t want to join anyway. Also, if your wife can manage to make it through 80 levels of Guardian, I think she would really like Dragon Hunter. It is a light-based ranged bow class with traps. Not exactly an elemental bow as you mentioned, but about as close as it gets considering that your attacks all passively burn mobs. Hope this was helpful. Welcome to GW2!

Jarvis.9540:

Two Rangers in a party is completely fine, especially if one of them is a Druid. Any party that would kick you guys for that is a party you wouldn’t want to join anyway. Also, if your wife can manage to make it through 80 levels of Guardian, I think she would really like Dragon Hunter. It is a light-based ranged bow class with traps. Not exactly an elemental bow as you mentioned, but about as close as it gets considering that your attacks all passively burn mobs. Hope this was helpful. Welcome to GW2!

I second the Dragon Hunter suggestion. I was against it at first. Strongly. I felt I made a guardian to be a paladin type character, not a ranger. Then I started playing Dragon Hunter. It’s hands-down my favorite specialization along with Reaper. It’s so freaking fun to play. Decent ranged damage (they can use longbows), powerful traps, and you’re still tanky. Good mix. You do have to get through quite a bit before you can unlock DH, but I feel its worth it.

you can be druid healer and condi ranger for raid, that will be np

Consider guardian for ranged class. Dragonhunter trait line you unlock at 80 uses a longbow.

Also consider two things:
1- The classes in this game don’t really determine your look: you could look “nature-oriented” with almost any proffesion as long as you get the proper gear.
2- The game expect you to change your build and gear to adapt to different situations. After completing the training, you can change your build at any time you are not in combat, swap your weapon and armor set totally, etc. You can easyly change from a full-power ranged bearbow ranger into a melee condi draketorch one, and then into a healbot sustain Druid in less than a minute.

As others have pointed before, I strongly suggest you to test every proffession (You can easyly do it on PvP mode, if you are not P4F, I strongly reccomend to try it.) and imagine how they will look quith the proper equipment. You still will need some time to truly appreciate the particular gameplay of every proff, but its a better start than just picking what you think you are familiar with. (You think, because GW2 is really really different from any other mmo).

For your wife, depending on how much she likes pet mechanics, you might key her onto warrior, as recommended above. Pets in GW2 are pale compared to Hunter pets, and they’re harder to control, though they finally just got a buff in damage reduction so they can survive stray AoE.
Longbow warrior can be potent, especially going into Berserker, but it doesn’t really feel awesome. Ranger gets both longbow and shortbow for direct damage and condition damage, so she might end up liking ranger more. Thief gets shortbow as well, but it might not fit her theme.

A dual-ranger pair can be a little limiting in terms of what group support you can offer, so I’d recommend picking two different classes. There’s still plenty of builds between them, and I’ve had success with them. If my friend is running spirit support, I tweak my build a bit while running high Vulnerability uptime, or use my other ranger for Druid/Beastmaster healtanking. It can work, but you need an understanding group.

To that aim, find a more casual guild that doesn’t focus on meta-level play.

To answer your original question, as someone who seems well experienced at all roles, I’m tempted to recommend Elementalist. Think WoW Mage with a ton more support and heal offspec all at the same time. If you wanted something more in-your-face melee:
Warrior performs best in melee and has the most weapon choices.
Revenant is really strong right now, and it’s very hard to turn down Shiro and Glint as legends.
Guardian has decent options, much more Paladin-esque with solid buff dispensing.
Engineer has kits you can swap through that give a melee experience and a quick way to unequip to dive back to range as necessary. It’s among the higher skill caps, and their elite spec gives access to hammer for added hilarity.
Thief has a lot of high risk, very dodgey play. Obviously more Rogue than kitty, though.
Ranger melee I find awkward, but I’m told sword is some high damage. I prefer greatsword or axe.
Elementalist has a close range dagger/dagger play that is/was meta for a while. Lots of damage and can still flip to support as needed.
Necromancer with dagger/dagger and Well skills has been fun for me. You can define the battlefield somewhat, purge boons, clear conditions, and it’s still very up close.
Mesmer is fairly unlike anything other MMOs have, and their sword play is heavy on boon denial, which comes in handy with some boss encounters and fairly vital in one of the new raid encounters.

Sorry if that’s long, but GW2 doesn’t answer the “what should I play” question very cleanly. XD
And a hearty welcome to you and your wife!

i think 1 of you should go for dragon hunter. which has very powerful trap skills

I vote for you going ranger→druid and your wife going guardian→dragonhunter.

Wow, I just went through all of the replies. Thank you very much, everyone. My wife has been trying out the Dragon Hunter and Beserker + Longbow combo this morning, as well as the Ranger Axe+ torch / Shortbow combo. She is having a tough time deciding! To be something different, I am looking at the elementalist. I saw a Tempest Dagger/Focus combo that seemed kind of neat.

Revenant doesn’t seem like a bad idea either. It kind of reminds me of druid in a way. With the whole, each Stance is a different Role thing. Shiro reminds me of Feral, Dwarf as Guardian (bear), and Centaur as Resto.

So many options!

Former WoW player here that mostly played a resto druid main. I enjoy the button pushiness of elementalist with the attunements. To me, it’s reminiscent of dancing through druid forms and has come closest to satisfying that urge for me. I’ve only messed around a little on revenant and it was okay. I didn’t feel like there was as much choice & flexibility, but I think it’s the heavy armor class that gets closest to the mechanical feel of a WoW druid.

I haven’t played druid, but ranger is alright. It probably has the closest thematic feel to a druid imo. Some of the ranger animations can be fun and it always seems to have that “Wheee! Let’s go!” feel that I would get when playing druid in WoW.

Edit: Just noticed you played feral most often. Revenant or a charr thief might be a good option.

In raids so far, only one (healing) Druid is needed per party.

So one of you should play revenant or elementalist if you want to play together and be invited together. Also get ascended gears.

The Druid spec here is a dedicated healer spec off of the Ranger.
So /jedihandwave these might not be the Druids you are seeking…

For an archer class… You have more choices than many people think.

Most people think “ranger, that’s like range right, so the bow guy?” But ranger here is more like an Army Ranger – special forces ops. And I find their strongest DPS build is actually melee with sword and whatever.

For archers, I used to like warrior a lot. But there is also Thief and once you hit 80, Guardian gains a powerful archer as well.

The downside of the Guardian Archer is you only get access to it in the elite spec – so you need to be a fast leveler or open to playing something that is not an archer for a while.

The downside of thief is everything is an area targeting ability and you might not like that playstyle.

The downside of warrior is that you’re so awesome everyone else needs to wear shades or um… er… I don’t know… I’m sure there’s a downside in there somewhere.

The downside of ranger is… everybody does it. You are BORG… But… its probably on par as a choice with warrior, except you also have pets that you have to manage as well.

Another problem for Ranger and Druid is that they are the same class… so you’ll both end up playing a similar character for a while until you hit 80 and one of you goes druid, while the other… either does nothing or also goes druid…

So… my archer, is my warrior…
But a LOT of people keep saying they like the Guardian’s archer. I just didn’t enjoy it so much but that may be because I’m not usually a fan of archers and much prefer playing my guardian with a big hammer and a huge stack of mobs all around me…

roamzero.9486:

Rangers are the red headed step child of the game that have been riddled with bad design decisions and unwarranted nerfs throughout their history. It took a massive outcry and giant forum CDI thread just to get them somewhat up to par.

During the entire period that Ranger was thought of as weak I was playing a sword/torch axe/axe ranger, using carrion crawler pets, with a high toughness and hybrid direct & condition damage build and more or less tanking Dungeons with it while matching damage of my teammates.

It was bad back then in terms of being bad at what people thought the class was: A WoW Hunter.

But if you went “off the rails” it played pretty well.

I suppose that era is over with now though – and my ranger is now very different than she used to be (but still not an archer).

I agree though on poor design choices as the ranger seems to have an inconsistent design.