Easy:
Warrior: Great passive abilities and requires the least amount of buttons to play effective. Pretty straight forward get in and smash gameplay. Burst skills and berserker rage are very easy to use. Supports a large array of weapons and pve can be easily won by camping the gs. Strong passive survival. Very strong in all game game modes and always accepted into groups for all content both pve and pvp.
Guardian: Very strong support and multiple full heals. Easy to use virtues and dragon hunter traps provide massive killing power with a low skill ceiling. Great in wvw zerging and contributes greatly in team fights even of played by unskilled players. Generally accepted in groups in all game modes. Weapons are easy to use and excels in self survival for pve and pvp. Harder to escape from from fights in pvp due to limited mobility.
Thief: Highest dps with the lowest effort. Best mobility and escapes in the game, allowing players to engage on their own terms and can retreat easily. Stealth is very powerful and is low risk high reward in low tier play. Capable of getting away and scoring kills even when a lot of mistakes are made. Makes huge numbers in pve, especially with staff. One of the strongest dueling classes in pvp.
Medium:
Ranger: Very balanced and performs every role decently well. Can safely engage from the longest distance with longbow. Requires good pet management to truly reach its full potential. Has good utilities for defense when pressured but they have to be used intelligently. Very strong healing and support with Druid. Performs decently in both pvp and pve, but is usually healing in raids.
Elementalist: Very strong support and self survival when built defensively. Has alot of skills and requires a ton of button pressing to stance dance between attunements. Performs decently when skill mashing but becomes hard to master. Provides huge amounts of aoe and can be built to be an area number with high damage and low survival if a player wants to be a classic mage. Usually plays bunker in pvp.
Necromancer: Extremely high self sustain but low mobility and cc defense. Can be frustrating to play against high mobility targets that reset fights and needs team support to excel. Requires good timing on returning conditions to enemies and stripping boons. Can be very devastating in team fights and can break any tank or bunker if used properly. In Reaper shroud, becomes unstoppable if able to reach a target reliably and stay in melee range of them. Very strong in structured pvp and in wvw zeros
Advanced:
Mesmer: One of the hardest classes to master but one of the most devastating in the game when learned. Requires a deep understanding of clone management and setups to burst down enemies. Strong control abilities, lockdown, and interrupts. Extremely rewarding to success but can be punished badly on mistakes. Chronomancer F5 requires pinpoint timing to use properly. Not recommended to new mmo/gw2 players. One of the best support classes in pve, one of the best duelists in pvp.
Engineer: Complex kits replace skills and requires pinpoint blasts finisher timing on combo fields for things like healing turret water field and gyro lightning fields to stay alive. Very quirky abilities that need to be combined with skills from other kits. Requires good kit swap timing. Low mobility but can control an area very reliably. Has extremely complex damage rotations and requires extensive effort to maximize its potential. Performs moderately in all game modes.
Revenant: Has multiple layers of resource management that includes energy, upkeep, cooldown timers, weapon swap, and legend swap. Very easy to be caught in a combination of resources you don’t need for a situation you are in. Had the lowest level of versatility in the game due to legend skills being locked. Very powerful in wvw Zerg fights but weak when alone. Currently underperforming in all game modes except wvw due its rigid class design limits.
(edited by lordhelmos.7623)