Guild Wars 2

A very good morning/afternoon/evening to all!

What’s an intermediate-newbie you ask…well, it’s someone who’s played every race and profession but hasn’t got a max level character till now.

As of today, I’ve spent two months in GW2 and think this is a good time as any to share my experience with the community.

On with the show!

Despite having never played the original game, I’ve been in love with GW2 since the day it launched. Everything from the game philosophy to gameplay was a breath of fresh air and a promise of redemption for the MMO sector. Almost like a gulp of fresh, cool water after spending days upon days withering away in a desert.

I was working in a foreign city when the game launched (with a laptop that became obsolete way back in 2009) and remember combing through the forums, skill calculators and reading the reviews. With every article that I’d read, I’d step into the shoes of the player and experience Tyria through his/her eyes. I’d roamed the streets of Lion’s Arch and lusted after the Legendaries before even creating an account.

Time passed and I found myself busied with the real world. Then suddenly, I was back home with a new job and a promotion. So I did what any gamer would do, built a kitten gaming rig. I ordered the game and dive bombed into Tyria with both eyes closed. My first character was a dark and mysterious Asura Necro that could gave children nightmares, loved the voice acting and the dialogue, but hated the conditions and the pace of the combat. With a shout of frustration, I abandoned the poor bugger.

My love for nature brought me to the Norn and gave birth to, what I now know to be a cliché, the Norn Guardian. I loved being the giant and bashing/slicing my way through a horde of ice monstrosities. This time I managed to stay invested till level 20 before once again getting frustrated with the pace of the fights.

Remember my love for nature? So yeah…Sylvari Elementalist. Playing the elementalist was exhausting to say the least. The constant switching between elements left me feeling…cheated. Sure, I felt really cool while setting things on fire and whipping a lightsaber-esque whip, but I could be doing so much MORE. Level 15 only.

By now I was getting worried, had I been suffering from the grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side syndrome? Why was a game that I was in love with for months failing to provide me the fun and excitement that I had been promised. Pushing aside all doubts, I decided to give GW another chance, and put everything on the Human Thief. Though I was dissappointed with the race and the personal story, I trudged through the early levels till I got my hands on a shortbow.

My world exploded.

One second I was taking on 5 mobs single handedly, the other; I was ganking single targets with obscenely high damage. For the first time since I started playing, I was in love with the game. I got him to level 20 before deciding to level up a few other professions before settling on my main. The Ranger sure looked interesting.

After falling asleep on my keyboard while leveling a Ranger I decided to go back to a more melee focused build. Say hello to my Charr Warrior. The Charr is everything that a Human is not. Most of the people on the forums complain about the Charr, I say to them, they don’t know what they’re missing. Who doesn’t see a furry and ferocious kitty and NOT want to cuddle it? Insanity I tell you.

I liked the personal story and the gameplay of the warrior so much that he ended up being my main character for quite some time. I experimented with builds, from the atypical Greatsword to the mighty Hammer, I tried them all and soon found myself playing with the Axe/Mace. And so began the downfall of my favourite character.

Every fight that I’d enter was something like this –

auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate

What had been a deep and interesting class, atleast to me, became more boring than a bear-longbow ranger. The Mace 5 ability and Eviscerate still haunt me on some days.

By this time, I had experimented with crafting and had stashed stacks upon stacks of crafting materials in my bank that were gathering dust while waiting for my fickle mind to settle on a main. Seeking more of a challenge in the open world I started a Mesmer.

The leveling was painful, I’ll admit, but fun as well. I was dodging, switching, shattering and bursting my way through the levels and before I knew it, I was participating in my first ever Live Story. Yeah, Scarlet, I’m looking at you. It was purple vs red and I beat Scarlet and her endless waves of minions into the ground with only a giant sword and metal block thingy that made run faster (I may or may not have had the help of thousands of other players. I admit to nothing). This was also when I first got a look at Exotics. My first exotic weapon dropped for me after I killed Scarlet. It was a spear called the Impaler. I previewed it and almost fell off my bed in excitement. IT HAD A PARTICLE EFFECT. I still get ribbed by my guildies for screaming like a little girl. Yes they heard me. Across thousands of miles.

The Mesmer (now level 50) was also when I first made foray into WvW.

Have you seen a headless chicken? No? Well, you only needed to see me to get a fair idea of what that’s like. With no idea what to do and where to go, I tried being the hero and stood in front of a tower gate with hands on my hips, demanding they open the gates for the true avatar of beauty and purpleiness. Needless to say, I got a vat of boiling oil, a couple of rounds of cannon fire and a million or so AoEs dumped on my head. Now WvW had joined Eviscerate and Mace 5 in the deepest and darkest corners of my mind.

I now play an oddball Norn Engineer called Rusty Carburetor with a penchant for setting things on fire. I don’t know how long I’ll stick with good ol Rusty, but I do know that it’s going to be fun while I do.

If you’ve somehow stuck through till the end, and I really don’t know why you would, then I applaud your persistence. My journey with Guild Wars 2 has been short but full of misadventures. I’ve joined champ farm trains and had my kitten handed to me during WvW fights. I tried soloing the huge kitten champion Giant in Ascalon for 20 minutes. Got his HP down by 5% before he one-shotted me. I don’t have a Legendary, a bucket load of titles or even a main character.

But what I have had is a kittenload of fun, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what gaming is all about?

Apologies if the length of the post caused you headache or eyestrain. Here’s a cookie for your trouble.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this absurdly long article.

PS: Here’s to hoping that I can finally choose a character and stick with it.

too long, didn’t read most of it, but hey, glad to see that you are having fun!

That’s awesome man good to know you are enjoying the game!

My main is a mesmer still love him to bits, but very very slow to level had fun anyway. Goodluck in finding what profession you choose as a main

I read the entire post, and -I must say- enjoyed it immensely. Do you write professionally? If not, you should consider it. Thank you for an enjoyable few minutes. =)

Hehe that was a cool post.
I think misadventures are some of the most fun things in the game.

I ’ll tell you one of mine, from last night no less.

Back when the game launched my husband and I were leveling out mains together me on my Mesmer, him on his Ranger.
There is this place in Iron marches where a branded warband/ army with a champ comes down the road- back then the 2 of us jumped in front of the army yelled “you shall not pass” and killed them all- it was a big moment for us.

So last night I am wandering in Iron Marches on my Ranger- I am feeling my oats- I am mean and strong. I see this same warband with the champ Victorious somebody of whatever his name is.
I yell “you shall not pass” and they promptly grind me into the dust.
They passed allright

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

too long, didn’t read most of it, but hey, glad to see that you are having fun!

Don’t blame ya. But thanks for dropping by anyway

Shoiba.2980:

That’s awesome man good to know you are enjoying the game!

My main is a mesmer still love him to bits, but very very slow to level had fun anyway. Goodluck in finding what profession you choose as a main

Thanks Shoiba. I just switched from a Phantasm build to a Shatter build with Deceptive Evasion. Much more satisfying and active. Looking forward to getting back on it after I’ve played a bit with the Engineer.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I read the entire post, and -I must say- enjoyed it immensely. Do you write professionally? If not, you should consider it. Thank you for an enjoyable few minutes. =)

It’s always a pleasure Inculpatus

I do write professionally. In fact I should be writing for a website right now. Instead I’ve stuck with the procrastination bug. Oh well. Gotta find a muse.

@Morrigan – Iron marches. Branded warband. Victorious-champ-thingy. Will definitely give it a shot once I become an advanced-newbie. Speaking of yelling things.

Picture an 8 foot tall, bald engineer with a long goatee, curly mustache and an eye-goggle stomping around with a flamethrower while yelling BURN BABY BURN.

heheh i finished reading them after all!

thanks for sharing your adventures!

looking forward to more writings in the future!

Compare this

arjun.9025:

Remember my love for nature? So yeah…Sylvari Elementalist. Playing the elementalist was exhausting to say the least. The constant switching between elements left me feeling…cheated. Sure, I felt really cool while setting things on fire and whipping a lightsaber-esque whip, but I could be doing so much MORE. Level 15 only.

And this

arjun.9025:

I decided to go back to a more melee focused build. Say hello to my Charr Warrior.
…
I liked the personal story and the gameplay of the warrior so much that he ended up being my main character for quite some time. I experimented with builds, from the atypical Greatsword to the mighty Hammer, I tried them all and soon found myself playing with the Axe/Mace. And so began the downfall of my favourite character.

Every fight that I’d enter was something like this –

auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate

What had been a deep and interesting class, atleast to me, became more boring than a bear-longbow ranger. The Mace 5 ability and Eviscerate still haunt me on some days.

Not sure if trolling or twerking..

yanchoy.9176:

Compare this

arjun.9025:

Remember my love for nature? So yeah…Sylvari Elementalist. Playing the elementalist was exhausting to say the least. The constant switching between elements left me feeling…cheated. Sure, I felt really cool while setting things on fire and whipping a lightsaber-esque whip, but I could be doing so much MORE. Level 15 only.

And this

arjun.9025:

I decided to go back to a more melee focused build. Say hello to my Charr Warrior.
…
I liked the personal story and the gameplay of the warrior so much that he ended up being my main character for quite some time. I experimented with builds, from the atypical Greatsword to the mighty Hammer, I tried them all and soon found myself playing with the Axe/Mace. And so began the downfall of my favourite character.

Every fight that I’d enter was something like this –

auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate

What had been a deep and interesting class, atleast to me, became more boring than a bear-longbow ranger. The Mace 5 ability and Eviscerate still haunt me on some days.

Not sure if trolling or twerking..

Nope, definitely not trolling. Don’t know what twerking is though. So could be twerking. Is that a bad thing?

Fun read Keep writing!

Great post, OP and a much needed change from the normal forum infighting. Glad you’re enjoying the game and good luck in sticking with a profession in the future (says the guy with four mains and 6 80s. lol).

Vayne.8563:

Great post, OP and a much needed change from the normal forum infighting. Glad you’re enjoying the game and good luck in sticking with a profession in the future (says the guy with four mains and 6 80s. lol).

You’re my hero Vayne.

Will definitely post a follow up once I get to lvl 80 and start Dungeoning.

On another note, I’d love to hear some stories from the veterans about their beginner days. What was GWII like when it was a wee little baby?

arjun.9025:

Vayne.8563:

Great post, OP and a much needed change from the normal forum infighting. Glad you’re enjoying the game and good luck in sticking with a profession in the future (says the guy with four mains and 6 80s. lol).

You’re my hero Vayne.

Will definitely post a follow up once I get to lvl 80 and start Dungeoning.

On another note, I’d love to hear some stories from the veterans about their beginner days. What was GWII like when it was a wee little baby?

Do you mean GW1?

Basically lost of trash talking between luxons and kurzicks.

Battles were smaller scaled, so less lag and interrupts were used to counter spells and attacks. Assassin are discriminated against in PvE while everyone wants 2 monk party members.

arjun.9025:

Vayne.8563:

Great post, OP and a much needed change from the normal forum infighting. Glad you’re enjoying the game and good luck in sticking with a profession in the future (says the guy with four mains and 6 80s. lol).

You’re my hero Vayne.

Will definitely post a follow up once I get to lvl 80 and start Dungeoning.

On another note, I’d love to hear some stories from the veterans about their beginner days. What was GWII like when it was a wee little baby?

I have over 20 characters and 6 of them are 80s. Working on leveling my first thief to 80 now, then I’ll move onto the ele.

In the beginning, Guild Wars 2 was a much different game than it is today. First of all, there were tons of bugs early on. For the first few days the trading post didn’t work at all for example, and the amount of bugged events was truly large. But the world was amazing, the gameplay was great and every day we discovered something new.

There was no living story, no preview in the auction house, no Fractals of the Mists. We just had the dungeons with their explorable mode and Orr for end game.

Arguably the shift to achievement point importants via the chests and account bonuses was one of the biggest shifts in the game. The game was more “free flow” when it launched. All of that stuff is still there, but the living story didn’t overpower it.

When we just started playing in the betas- we kept seeing this message in Queensdale about the swamp lying Dormant.
It intrigued us to no end and we just had to figure out what it was.

So shortly after launch I am sneaking around in the swamp, alternated with running for my life because I am level 9 and everything wants to chew my face off.
The whole world suddenly goes dark and Shadow Behemoth spawns right on top of me, my jaw dropped and I got killed by a passing Aataxe- as I was lying on the ground, I thought man! how awesome!
Old Behemoth is still one of my favourite bosses in the game.

Then there is a giant in Harathi Hinderlands called Koll Skullcrusher, we happened into a cave with 50 dead people lying there and this brute stomping on their corpses.
We ran right out and called for help on chat and then watched the help rush into the cave, we let them go first.
We were greeted by another 20 dead players lying in a heap it was hilarious

@Orian: Never played GW1, although I’ve heard that it was pretty much the perfect MMO. I was talking about GW2.

@Vayne: I totally see what you mean. Even though I’ve only spent a limited time in the game, I like the open world a lot more than the living story. But I guess this is mainly because I’m still exploring and each new zone is like cotton candy (and who doesn’t like cotton candy).

For the people who’ve seen the length and breadth of Tyria, I imagine Living Story is a pretty big incentive to log back into the game. Maybe in the future we can see more races and zones added to the game, but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed.

@Morrigan: Hahahahaha. I’m in Harathi Hinterlands right now with my Mesmer. Where is this wonderful giant you speak of? The only giant I came across was Fen and he had me gather so much grub sap I was stinking for days. He did make it up to me with his touching life story though.

Oh, and in the beginning (GW2) there were a lots of bots.

Edit:
my mistake ^^"

Glad you brought that up Orion. In my time playing, I’ve yet to come across a single bot. So kudos to Anet for taking care of that problem so thoroughly.

Morrigan.2809:

When we just started playing in the betas- we kept seeing this message in Queensdale about the swamp lying Dormant.
It intrigued us to no end and we just had to figure out what it was.

So shortly after launch I am sneaking around in the swamp, alternated with running for my life because I am level 9 and everything wants to chew my face off.
The whole world suddenly goes dark and Shadow Behemoth spawns right on top of me, my jaw dropped and I got killed by a passing Aataxe- as I was lying on the ground, I thought man! how awesome!
Old Behemoth is still one of my favourite bosses in the game.

Then there is a giant in Harathi Hinderlands called Koll Skullcrusher, we happened into a cave with 50 dead people lying there and this brute stomping on their corpses.
We ran right out and called for help on chat and then watched the help rush into the cave, we let them go first.
We were greeted by another 20 dead players lying in a heap it was hilarious

I met the great wurm in Caledon Forest pretty much the same way. I was just standing there and it popped out of the ground right in front of me. I was floored.

Amazing encounter.

arjun.9025:

Glad you brought that up Orion. In my time playing, I’ve yet to come across a single bot. So kudos to Anet for taking care of that problem so thoroughly.

Imagine back then when i saw 20 rangers mirroring each other or a group of naked players. ;D

he is here:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hidden_Ourobon

We found him by acident
I have no doubt eh will be easier to kill now.
When the game just launched everything was pretty hard because no-one really knew what the heck they were doing.
It was great fun!
edit
if you are in Harathi be sure to check out the amazing Goonies ship, also in a cave
will find it for you a bit later

Remember the fire ele in Metrica when the game started. It was so much harder. All we ever saw was dead bodies there. Man people were kitten ed. lol

Vayne.8563:

I met the great wurm in Caledon Forest pretty much the same way. I was just standing there and it popped out of the ground right in front of me. I was floored.

Amazing encounter.

I came across my first champion, another wurm, in Diessa Plateau when i was playing my Charr Warrior. I was still high from slaughtering everything in Ashford with my greatsword so thought I’d solo it.

It broke my mind, body, armour and spirit.

A month later I came back with my Mesmer and pretty much soloed it with three Duelists and the Scepter 3 attack. Revenge was taken and later I shared his meat with the hungry Charr from the nearby town.

@Orion: Dude, please don’t be so quick to judge. Maybe they were just having a picnic…yeah, a picnic in the nude. That’s probably all that it was :P

Vayne.8563:

Remember the fire ele in Metrica when the game started. It was so much harder. All we ever saw was dead bodies there. Man people were kitten ed. lol

Wow…so much generation gap. The only time I see 50+ players on a beginner’s map is when there’s a living story happening. The newbie zones are pretty much dead now (except Queensdale, everyone loves Queensdale).

arjun.9025:

arjun.9025:

Vayne.8563:

I met the great wurm in Caledon Forest pretty much the same way. I was just standing there and it popped out of the ground right in front of me. I was floored.

Amazing encounter.

I came across my first champion, another wurm, in Diessa Plateau when i was playing my Charr Warrior. I was still high from slaughtering everything in Ashford with my greatsword so thought I’d solo it.

It broke my mind, body, armour and spirit.

A month later I came back with my Mesmer and pretty much soloed it with three Duelists and the Scepter 3 attack. Revenge was taken and later I shared his meat with the hungry Charr from the nearby town.

@Orion: Dude, please don’t be so quick to judge. Maybe they were just having a picnic…yeah, a picnic in the nude. That’s probably all that it was :P

Vayne.8563:

Remember the fire ele in Metrica when the game started. It was so much harder. All we ever saw was dead bodies there. Man people were kitten ed. lol

Wow…so much generation gap. The only time I see 50+ players on a beginner’s map is when there’s a living story happening. The newbie zones are pretty much dead now (except Queensdale, everyone loves Queensdale).

Nah, plenty of people show up for the Maw, the Wurm and the Fire ele.

Axe/Axe for Warrior isn’t exactly the most fun weapon combination.

Zoid.2568:

Axe/Axe for Warrior isn’t exactly the most fun weapon combination.

I agree. If I ever go back to my Warrior, It’ll be for the hammer. There’s so much awesomeness in that weapon.

arjun.9025:

Zoid.2568:

Axe/Axe for Warrior isn’t exactly the most fun weapon combination.

I agree. If I ever go back to my Warrior, It’ll be for the hammer. There’s so much awesomeness in that weapon.

Yes hammer is good in PvP and against thrash and veteran mobs in PvE. Against bosses hammer is pretty much useless as CC only affect bosses every X-XX hit depending on how many allies are near the boss.

Ahh It turns out the Goonies ship is a jumping puzzle, never knew that but it figures why I fell to my death so many times
It is called Fawcett’s bounty
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fawcett's_Bounty

Check it out it is amazing

Will do

I’ve only completed one jumping puzzle till now and I don’t even know which. Just saw it pop up while I was checking my achievements.

arjun.9025:

And so began the downfall of my favourite character.

Every fight that I’d enter was something like this –

auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate
auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, auto-attack, Eviscerate

What had been a deep and interesting class, atleast to me, became more boring than a bear-longbow ranger. The Mace 5 ability and Eviscerate still haunt me on some days.

Apart from the fact Auto-spam+Evis is lower DPS than what a Warrior can pull off.
Just because you play an interesting class in a boring way it doesn’t make the class itself boring.
If you look at how I play a Warrior you’d see I combine at least 40 buttons.

That being said all classes can get away with autoattacking into Mordor, you’re not forced to do so though (nor it is the best way to play classes).

I am still waiting for my cookie… Just so you know… lol

@Red Falcon – In my article I expressly mentioned that I feel that the Warrior is an extremely interesting class and it’s only that particular weapons-set that made me lose interest in it.

In fact, out of all the professions I’ve tried Warrior and Mesmer are the most interesting to me right now. Followed by Engineer and Thief.

Having said that, I decided to move to a different profession instead of going back to my preferred weapon (Hammer) because I wanted to get a feel of all the professions that this game has to offer. Right now I can confidently say that while I’m not an expert at any of the classes and far, far, FAR from good at PvP, I have a solid basic understanding of the game mechanics.

Surprisingly, I’ve noticed that every time I make a new alt and level to the 30s and 40s, I get exponentially better at playing my older alts :P

knives.6345:

I am still waiting for my cookie… Just so you know… lol

How can I add you in-game? I’ll be sure to send you one after I level my cooking a bit

ahahahahahahahahahaha!

you know it’s bad to fall out of your chair laughing at work? my coworkers are looking at me askance, but kitten that was entertaining!

I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself arjun, finding a positive thread amid this endless sea of negativity is wonderful. The WvW imagery…..lmao!

I’d offer more, but I’m laughing too hard to think right now (plus I really need coffee). Here’s to wishing you many, many more hours of enjoyment and fun!

Great post. So refreshing to have someone post their enjoyment of the game instead of griping and complaining about how the game is ruining their lives because they can’t get a particular weapon skin.

I love the game for the lore, the look, and the play. I’m glad you are enjoying it as well. Kudos to you.

See some warrior roaming vids on the wvw part of the forum. They are not auto attack evis spamming . If I try that against them I would be dead meat.

Flamethrower engi is a good ride so I’m sure you’ll have fun with Rusty. I’ve played since launch and still haven’t completely settled on one profession. I’ve played Guardian the most, but have all the professions at 80 and alternate them every week or two. It’s sad that they can’t all keep up with the ascended treadmill so I’m just working on the guard for that. I don’t think Anet completely thought through the costs of vertical progression when they decided that the best way to retain players was to give them a gear grind.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ahahahahahahahahahaha!

you know it’s bad to fall out of your chair laughing at work? my coworkers are looking at me askance, but kitten that was entertaining!

I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself arjun, finding a positive thread amid this endless sea of negativity is wonderful. The WvW imagery…..lmao!

I’d offer more, but I’m laughing too hard to think right now (plus I really need coffee). Here’s to wishing you many, many more hours of enjoyment and fun!

Thanks Lanfear, I aim to please

jheryn.8390:

Great post. So refreshing to have someone post their enjoyment of the game instead of griping and complaining about how the game is ruining their lives because they can’t get a particular weapon skin.

I love the game for the lore, the look, and the play. I’m glad you are enjoying it as well. Kudos to you.

That’s partly why I posted this now instead of waiting till lvl 80. I think it’s important for newcomers to know that while Anet has made some pretty crontroversial decisions lately, the game, akittens core, is still pretty brilliant. In my opinion if you explore the open world and do a little bit of PvP and WvW whenever the mood strikes you, you still get your money’s worth. Legendaries and Ascended are just bonus (i realise That I’m probably the minority here).

aspirine.6852:

See some warrior roaming vids on the wvw part of the forum. They are not auto attack evis spamming . If I try that against them I would be dead meat.

Thanks for the tip! Will surely check that section out

@Raine: Wish you all the best for your quest for the Ascended. Hope you get all your chars equipped soon.

Wow, I can’t believe it. An entire post without rage, whine or cry. No, childish “I quit and this is why”. No, unenlightened “ANet must not care about their game”. You didn’t quote the Manifesto, nor did you take Dev. quotes out of context.

And where’s the swearing? I will have to reread your post, there has to be a hidden “Kitten” in there somewhere.

…… time passes

Ahhh, there’s one, wheeew. I just couldn’t imagine how could someone possibly write an entire post without at least trashing something with some kind of crude vulgarity, it’s just not cricket.

finds sarcasm switch, flips to “Off”

How refreshing, someone who bought the game and played it to have fun.

My game experience is somewhat varied from what I read of yours, OP. I did play the original GW for 6 plus years and the anticipation of the GW2 release was near unbearable. I played every day of the open beta and got a feel for where I wanted to go with my permanent characters. The Roleplayer in me insisted I work up each of my 5 characters before I even bought the game. Name, species, profession, physical appearance, character history and internal conflict were all in place months before pre-launch. Let the waiting begin.

Come pre-launch, I was logging in every 5 minutes as I anxiously awaited the servers to go live. Then it happened; the clouds parted, the heavens opened, angelic voices sang out as one as the servers came on line.

I created my Main first, followed by my 4 Alts. Got all the names I wanted except my Asura. The 4 letter double vowel one that I had chosen was already taken but fear not good reader, I had four backup Asuran names in reserve for just such an occasion. Oh yes, I had planned ahead.

Character creation complete, let the playing begin. In the few hours I had all 5 characters out of their respective capital cities and exploring the world. Every 2-4 hours I would switch characters to move them all up evenly and get the best overall feel for each one. And for how long did you continue this crazed obsession you might ask? Over the first 3 days ~52 hours. Needless to say, very little sleep was had and I did take Monday off in anticipation of said obsession.

…continued

Skip forward to today

My playstyle:
PvP – I just don’t like it’s just not my bag, baby. Yes I am still a ‘Rabbit’ and expect to be the same many years from now.
WvW – Well, I did WvW till I got all the points I needed for my ‘Been There, Done That’ star and that was the last time I spent ANY time in the Mist Wars.
PvE – Open world PvE is where I spend 99% of my time. I say ninety nine percent because I do NOT do Dungeons or Fractals but they did give us a Scarlet’s Playhouse, of which Elementalist solo’d quite nicely.

My Characters:
I still have my original 5 pre-launch characters, though they are all grown up to L80 now. The below list is arranged by most to least played.

• Human Elementalist
• Norn Ranger
• Asuran Engineer
• Sylvari Necromancer
• Human Mesmer

1. Human Elementalist
   The Ele continues to be my Main character and I must say the most fun to play. Sure playing an Ele can be very challenging but once I hit about L30 the Meta fell into place for me and away I went. I can now solo my way from Queensdale to Cursed Shores with very little problem. Now don’t get me wrong, the Ele cannot just rush blindly into any situation and come out unscathed like some of the other classes(I omit which classes so as to not make certain people defensive).
   The thing I like most about the Ele is the thing the OP seemed to like least, switching between the Elements. Arguably, being able to switch between the elements makes the Ele the most versatile character available. Sure the other professions get weapon/kit switching in combat which gives you 15 skills to fight with; whereas, I much prefer the 25 skills at the Ele’s disposal. I think the key to the Ele is tactics and timing. Cool-down to an Ele never need exist.
2. Norn Ranger
   Like the OP, my love of nature brought me to the Norn but the Ranger seemed to bring the Nature theme to fruition. The Roleplayer in me rears its head yet again. In character creation I chose the Snow Leopard totem, therefor the pet that gets the most workout is, you guessed it, the Snow Leopard. I wanted to carry it a step further and make my Elite skill ‘Become the Snow Leopard’ but honestly it is so blatantly underpowered that I just cannot justify using it no matter what the Roleplayer says. Besides, I bought you the Lion Cub mini, yes, yes, I know it is not a Snow Leopard mini but it at least looks a bit meaner then the Orange Tabby Cat.
   I think the reason the Norn Ranger holds my second favorite slot lies in my attack style. I start off with a longbow to soften up the target then switch to the GreatSaw skill Swoop and dive into melee. Something about a flying 9ft bundle of muscle wielding a chainsaw just strikes me as instilling pure terror and you thought my pet Leopard was nasty.
3. Asuran Engineer
   Just seemed like a perfect fit. Plus… Flamethrower…nuff said.
4. Sylvari Necromancer
   I went with this for the contrast. It seemed like the exact opposite to the perfect fit of the Asuran Engineer. The newest plant species summoning the undead just seemed completely out of place to me. Then along came Trahearn the Sylvari Necromancer…who knew?
   So I have this smiling Sylvari dressed in Midnight Olive/Moss exotic armor with a matching Sclerite Karka Shell holding a Final Rest and surrounded by a flock of undead. This time the Roleplayer just shakes her head in disgust and quietly walks away.
5. Human Mesmer
   For the life of me I cannot figure out why I am not a fan of this character. I had no problem leveling her to 80 but all the time I just did not feel the love on this one. I had a Cobalt drop the other day that I was gonna put on her, maybe that will turn the tide but I doubt it.

tl;dr – Sorry if you were too lazy to read my post… I am too lazy to summarize it

@Yalora Istairiea.6287 just in case you did’t know- you can actually get a mini snow leopard.
I collect cat mini’s on my Ranger would kill for the Orange tabby myself but I didn’t play GW
here is a pick of my Snow leopard

well my warrior was my first ever character and it is still the only character i play in this game. i will admit that leveling in this game was so painfully boring. i didn’t start having fun till i got to 80l, cause i feel that the game doesn’t actually start till you reached maxed level. ever since i got my warrior fully equipped with the best gear all i’ve ever done since launch was roam in wvw and pvp.

the combat and all the different class mechanics are what keeps me playing this game.