Guild Wars 2

I haven’t played the game in a long time (pre lions arch changes) so I am pretty out of the loop. I was thinking of coming back to the game for a bit and was hoping to get some advice from current players.

I am looking for a profession that most resembles traditional mage/caster gameplay. My first round on gw2 I tried out the ele but the d/d playstyle was just never very fun for me. What profession would you suggest for someone who traditionally plays casters (ex mage/spriest in wow, sorc in aion, bright wizard warhammer).

Also, I know the game never had, nor intended to have, a set endgame but with the inclusion of fractals and the living story what would you say is the current level of consistent playability with the game? Is it something you can spend a moderate amount of time on or one of those things you might play for a while then wait for new content to be released?

Thanks in advance for any information provided!

maplesop.7206:

I haven’t played the game in a long time (pre lions arch changes) so I am pretty out of the loop.

Welcome to m’boat.

maplesop.7206:

I am looking for a profession that most resembles traditional mage/caster gameplay. My first round on gw2 I tried out the ele but the d/d playstyle was just never very fun for me. What profession would you suggest for someone who traditionally plays casters (ex mage/spriest in wow, sorc in aion, bright wizard warhammer).

I’m not going to ask why, even though I really want to. Instead:

Staff ele. Make bad gear choices and fail to dodge, for the full traditional “caster” feel.

But it won’t be the same, because GW2 really doesn’t work that way. Still, you’ll be able to sit in the backline dropping fire on people if you really want to.

maplesop.7206:

Is it something you can spend a moderate amount of time on or one of those things you might play for a while then wait for new content to be released?

In spite of not being a “sandbox” style game, GW2 has a bit of sandboxiness about it. If you find something to do/something you want to work toward, you can spend forever and several weeks playing GW2. If you don’t… You’ll get bored. On the plus side, with no subscription, you can leave and come back whenever.

One interesting change – the new season of Living Story has the installments replayable at any time. Only thing is, you need to log in and click a button to unlock them during the timeframe of their release. (Otherwise, you’ve got to pay gems to unlock the episodes.) So… If you do get bored, just swing by once every few weeks or so.

Thanks for the reply. As to why, idk its just what I usually do. Play magic users in pretty much every game I play, but it was mainly just that d/d made the ele feel more like a melee dmg dealer with magic abilities than an actual mage to me.

Not opposed to it being different just like the idea of magic being dealt at a farther range than the d/d style allowed.

Try staff or scepter/focus ele, both are viable in many kinds of content, possibly more so than dagger/dagger (which works best for solo exploration). Dagger/focus might also be an alternative, although it does play closer to the enemy than staff or scepter.

That said, all the classes in gw2 have their individual charm, and I’ve found most of them play quite different than what I expected them to (with a background of many years of all kinds of rpg games). If you really want to shine, you should get used to switching weapon sets and utility skills depending on the content you do (and learn intelligently switching your atunements on ele, too).

I find myself switching weapons and skills regularly on my eles (I have them at lvll 80/80/78/23), often even from one encounter to the next. There’s just so much variety in gameplay with ele, it really is worth it to dive into the class mechanics and learn all the weapons.

As for playability of the game, it entirely depends on what you enjoy. There is a ton of stuff to do, but not everything appeals to every player. If you prefer the traditional “questing and dungeon grinding” gameplay, things may get a bit thin inbetween releases (depending on how much time you spend in game), but there’s always pvp, wvw, crafting and resource gathering, world exploration, achievements and collections, event chains and world boss events and a ton of other stuff to do. It really is up to you whether there’s too little, too much or just the right amount of stuff to do in this game.

Staff eles are really good right now, actually, so it’s probably a pretty good time to come back.

The new zones are generally harder as open world zones than anything that was in the game at launch. I feel they’re harder than Orr.

There’s a lot of stuff to do….depending on what you like to do. Dungeon runners, who do nothing but run dungeons over and over are feeling a kitteneated, but the game was always about the open world…and the personal/living story.

Some of the achievements are pretty challenging. Some people solo or duo dungeons for challenge as well.