Guild Wars 2

I have a problem. I know that now. I’ve leveled an engineer to 80, an elementalist to 80, a guardian to 80, and are now working on both a ranger and a warrior. As soon as I get a class to 80, I start thinking about how that “other” profession must be so much better.

I’m not a very good player. I have terrible reflexes and can’t, for the life of me, dodge at the right time or memorize the best key-combos to hit in the right order for each weapon on each class. If I get into melee range on big boss fights I can’t make out anything happening on my screen with all the other players filling it up.

I die a lot.

And now, I’m wondering, would a warrior or ranger fix that for me? Have I just played squishy classes thus far? Or is the grass just looking greener everywhere else?

lol, the classes you haven’t played yet all have their drawbacks as well.

If you’re not into dodging or getting stuck in the middle of mass melee’s
The Ranger is probably a good “Don’t have to have super fast reflexes” class.

Until they fix Death Shroud and Minion Mastery, Necromancers are going to be a tough class to win with.

Mesmers are even squishier than elementalists. And they have a very complex play style.

Warriors are basically Guardians with less healing and additional speed. Anet really copped out on their design.

They all have their strengths as well. The game is exquisitely balanced..

Even though Mesmer is the squishiest and most difficult to master, I like her the most.

Iive never gotten a thief past lvl 30, so can’t say anything about them.

If you’re doing PvE, I’d say Ranger and Engineer are your best choices.

Ranger, just fight at range as best you can, use Greatsword if you have to melee. The auto attack has a dodge built in, so you’ll naturally avoid some of the hits coming your way. Bears, drakes, and wolves/dogs are your friends.

For Engineer, pick a kit that goes well with your weapon, covering what it doesn’t, but again you’ll want to fight more at range. Then, add in one or two turrets on your other skills. I’d suggest gun and missile launcher. The turrets fight on their own while they’re out, so they continue to operate even when you can’t see what’s going on.

Make your keybinds more ergonomic and simple so that it suits your needs with minimal focus. You’ll see in increase in abilities.

EDIT: One hand moves, the other attacks.

A Warrior in Soldier’s gear with Healing Signet is very bulky. With the best gear you can get your health up somewhere between 28-30K, and the toughness means you’ll take less damage per hit. This setup can survive in PvE melee pretty well, though if you take a significant portion of your health you might want to retreat fora bit to let Heal Sig rebuild your health. If you equip a bow in the second weapon slot, you can do some ranged damage.

p.s. since survivability is the trade-off for high damage, don’t expect to kill with the same speed as you would with glass cannon gear, but if survivability is your issue, this might be the way to go. I won’t guarantee you won’t die, but I do think you’ll die less.

It does not really matter which class you play, every class has some way to stay alive, avoid damage (be it blocks, invulnerability, reflects, vigor to keep doding more often), you just simply have to learn the encounters, use these defensive skills to not die when the boss attacks and attack when it is not attacking.

serenke.4806:

It does not really matter which class you play, every class has some way to stay alive, avoid damage (be it blocks, invulnerability, reflects, vigor to keep doding more often), you just simply have to learn the encounters, use these defensive skills to not die when the boss attacks and attack when it is not attacking.

I’m going to disagree. The level of skill needed to survive with a warrior is quite a bit lower than that needed to stay alive with many of the other professions.

serenke.4806:

It does not really matter which class you play, every class has some way to stay alive, avoid damage (be it blocks, invulnerability, reflects, vigor to keep doding more often), you just simply have to learn the encounters, use these defensive skills to not die when the boss attacks and attack when it is not attacking.

Well, Necro lacks those things, but it can usually just eat a boss attack in death shroud and not be in too bad of a situation after that. Can’t do it for long, though, since boss attacks come too fast to generate the life force.

IndigoSundown.5419:

serenke.4806:

It does not really matter which class you play, every class has some way to stay alive, avoid damage (be it blocks, invulnerability, reflects, vigor to keep doding more often), you just simply have to learn the encounters, use these defensive skills to not die when the boss attacks and attack when it is not attacking.

I’m going to disagree. The level of skill needed to survive with a warrior is quite a bit lower than that needed to stay alive with many of the other professions.

I did not say it was the same level of skill, just that they all have tools. Warriors are mind-numbingly tanky though even while being full zerk.

Seriously though, you should go Mesmer. They are so weak and squishy until they hit level 80, just playing them is a crash course in GW2 survival.

You’ll quickly learn how and when to block attacks, because if you don’t, two hits will kill you. You’ll get dodge rolling ingrained into your muscle memory just because you’ll want to make extra clones. Because of all the crazy teleporting mesmers do, it’ll train you on how to survey the battlefield. Not just to know where the enemies are, but where YOU actually are.

Then once you hit lvl 80 you’ll have all that hardcore GW2 survival training, and suddenly your Mesmer will stop being so crappy. With your suddenly juiced up Mesmer and your newfound knowledge of how to use invisibility, teleports, clones, dodging, and blocking you’ll be killing monsters and players and wondering how it was the Mesmer got so good. Then I advise you to go back to your other characters. With your new Mesmer honed combat skills, your guardian and engineer will seen stronger than ever. But it’s not really them that are stronger, it’ll be you that’s better ????

I actually find mesmer much easier to survive with than an elementalist, due to the number of teleports and aggro drawing clones etc.
Ele is just squish ultimate. For me.
Even thief is easier. For me.
And I main a necro with Zealot (or Clerics, or Soldiers, depending on mood) gear, which can eat up pretty much anything.

Um Abbas.5693:

I actually find mesmer much easier to survive with than an elementalist, due to the number of teleports and aggro drawing clones etc.
Ele is just squish ultimate. For me.
Even thief is easier. For me.
And I main a necro with Zealot (or Clerics, or Soldiers, depending on mood) gear, which can eat up pretty much anything.

At 80 Mesmer is definitely the bees knees. Strangely powerful and survivable, but before you get those last few trait unlocks…. Sooo easily killable….

All my mesmer, elementalist and thief are at the moment around 50, so I am quite looking forward to the lvl 80 mesmer
But I stop running alts about 2 years back, log them only not to burn out from a main (in all games the same thing for me).
The mesmer however did catch my interest a lot, almost as much as my necromancer.

Um Abbas.5693:

All my mesmer, elementalist and thief are at the moment around 50, so I am quite looking forward to the lvl 80 mesmer
But I stop running alts about 2 years back, log them only not to burn out from a main (in all games the same thing for me).
The mesmer however did catch my interest a lot, almost as much as my necromancer.

Due to teleportation and various other dungeon party support skills, mesmers are a valuable commodity. Necromancers… not so much. I love my lvl 80 necro and she’s super powerful, but for whatever reason people just would rather have nearly any other class in the group. It’s so sad… One day Anet will stop hating on Necros and give then back their rightful powers… Until then we just gotta suffer quietly. And occasionally summon minions at exactly the wrong time to crash and burn toxic elitists parties who complain about any non warrior without full ascended zerker gear.

I would agree with the Ranger option. Try that one first. I play a friend who is also the same way. I tend to find her face tanking often. But she seems to do fine. She not so quick with dodges or using the right rotations. She can’t kill things META fast But shes alive and having fun

I think Rangers are one of the better classes, BUT that being said they can’t take a whole lot of dmg as they are meant to stay back.
So basically if you aren’t the best at dodging or doing plenty of rolls you may find it challenging at first.
Then again Rangers if built well can be a beast and kill quick without even worrying about getting hit.

serenke.4806:

IndigoSundown.5419:

serenke.4806:

It does not really matter which class you play, every class has some way to stay alive, avoid damage (be it blocks, invulnerability, reflects, vigor to keep doding more often), you just simply have to learn the encounters, use these defensive skills to not die when the boss attacks and attack when it is not attacking.

I’m going to disagree. The level of skill needed to survive with a warrior is quite a bit lower than that needed to stay alive with many of the other professions.

I did not say it was the same level of skill, just that they all have tools. Warriors are mind-numbingly tanky though even while being full zerk.

Certainly, all professions have tools for survival. However, since lower twitch skill is the OP’s issue, a profession with more survivability does seem to be a better choice.

Elias.3204:

And now, I’m wondering, would a warrior or ranger fix that for me? Have I just played squishy classes thus far? Or is the grass just looking greener everywhere else?

No class can compensate for a bad playing style. (no offense intended)

The difference in “squishiness” between warrier/guardian and ele is quite noticable.

If you have problems to learn your class and use all the skills, I would suggest you roll a warrior. He is quity tanky from the start without using “special skills” and with defensive gear even more tankier/robust. If you have problems with melee use a longbow etc. for the warrior and you do not need to melee.

However: This comes with a DPS loss. If you play alone you will notice that it takes much longer to kill enemies.

But maybe that helps you to survive longer and to understand and use your skills better, so you maybe get better in playing, die less, and will have more fun doing it.

Forget the BS what others say about: “All class has their ups and downs”. Fact is: there are much more forgiving classes than others. A warrior still has 18-19k life in full zerker and highest armor class while an elementalist has 11k and lowest armor, this is very noticeable.

Warrior is by far the easiest class, followed by ranger. I played all classes between 150-800 hours and can safely say that. Comparing the same content I did with elementalist to warrior is like super hard mode to easy mode. I only run zerker builds so you can make it much more forgiving if you go for more tanky gear.

I’d say ranger for Silverwastes .. for all other zones go warrior .. or guardian.

On boss fights in the open world .. just used ranged .. bow as warrior, scepter as guardian.
Even if you you do less damage ranged, its still more than you do as a dead player

I would try as others suggest, Ranger.

It can be either very tricky in PvE if you want to go with something like Sword or rather friendly for new players with Greatsword, for example.

It’s heals apart from Heal as One are both good and will keep you alive.

Just don’t overtune and stay with something like Longbow and Bear forever.

Judging by your descreption, I would advice taking Greatsword/X (x-whatever you want), Healing Spring, Lightning Reflex and Signet of Stone/hunt as utilities and checking it out.

Even if you fail to dodge something, you can press Reflex, Signet of Stone or Swoop (GS #3) to stop all damage. And autoattack will also evade tons of damage by itself.

Something like Knight stats and you won’t be short on damage, way better than Longbow + better AoE.

Rym.1469:

Even if you fail to dodge something, you can press Reflex, Signet of Stone or Swoop (GS #3) to stop all damage. And autoattack will also evade tons of damage by itself.

Something like Knight stats and you won’t be short on damage, way better than Longbow + better AoE.

Longbow 5 followed by 3 is great AoE with nice single-target burst. Even better with
signet of the hunt castet before it.
You can switch to greatsword if after that still more than 1 mobs are alive ^^

Hahaha, well, to answer the title, grass is always greener on the other side, at least from far away. But in my experience, when you move to the ‘greener’ side, you’ll find that it’s not so green after all.
An a thief main, I sometimes get tired of being all squishy and made a tank warrior. Then I found out that tank warriors deal abysmal damage (compared to zerk thief), while zerk warrior are still pretty squishy. Not to mention the brain dead gameplay.
Then I admired the versatility and tankyness of dd elementalists, then get mindblown by the amount of skills and cooldowns management skill needed as a dd ele. (let’s face it, as a thief, you’ll probably only use 2-3 weapon skills, At least in pve, all without cooldowns).
Then I drooled over necromancer’s minions and elite skill, and proceeded to find out that necros is kinda sad in pve, and the minions are kitteningly (almost) useless.not to mention she is SLOW.
Then I tried a ranger, envying that 1500 range and insane autoattack damage, and deleted himself due to brain dead pew pew gameplay.
Then I tried a mesmer, drooling over the portals and clones. Which I then neglected because I’m too lazy to level her and her damage is sad at low levels.
Then I tried a guardian, as I was frustrated at being hardcountered by guardians in pvp. In the end I deleted him becaus, well, no particular reason, I just don’t need another tanky class…
So… Yeah, so try out every class, you’ll find your own preferred class based on your playstyles. You’ll also find out what you can’t live without in a class. For me it’s mobility, the ability to Dodge 6-7 times in a row, and not needing to worry about cooldowns. Who knows, your requirements might differ, but then, everyone is different.