Guild Wars 2

What profession is the toughest and can still do great damage? I have been back about 4 weeks after almost a year being gone. I just got the expansion 2 days ago and after being gone so long and with everything that has changed i am having trouble picking a profession to play and stick with. I like ranged class’s in most games i have ever played but in gw2 if you play only at a range you are at a disadvantage as far as damage goes because the game rewards those that play up close and personal with more damage. That is why i want to know what people think in there own opinion is a class that does not die easy or is forgiving if you forget to roll out of the way first thing. I do not mind finishing leveling one of my professions but what i have right now is ( Warrior 80) ( Guard 80 ) ( Necro 80 ) ( Ranger 80 ) ( Mez 55 ) ( Ele 70 ) ( Engi 45 ) ( Theif 30 ) and i have not made the Rev yet.

For me, was Ele, maybe because I’m not huge on swapping my elements and rotations or ground targetting.

Warrior has most HP, strongest armor, and still does great damage.

Obtena.7952:

For me, was Ele, maybe because I’m not huge on swapping my elements and rotations or ground targetting.

I think he means toughest in terms of durability not in terms of difficulty to learn.

Necromancer is very forgiving with death shroud. Probably not the most forgiving but still a good choice.

With weapon swapping you can go both ranged and melee to suit what’s needed so warrior, guardian or ranger are be my suggestions. Warriors can be made to be just plain tough and hard to put down; guardians have all the heal style skills to keep them going; rangers have weapons that allow either an auto evade or a skilled one plus healing spring is simply an awesome heal. That’s just for melee obviously since with ranged you’d just cycle through their various weapon skills as needed.

Necro is the answer, unlike other 8 professions necro was designed from day one to take damage, shrug it off like it wasn’t there and defeat his opponent by being the tankier kitten around.

For that reason (least now with the reaper) he has some serious sustained damage mitigation – be it incoming damage % reductions (plenty of those!), popping death shroud or his self heals from many different sources. Also a very strong part of his defense is condition gameplay. He’s got plenty of ways to get those off himself and pay enemies back with interest when it comes to conditions. Also having minions to take some heat off you helps too.

Ranger is also awesome – his defense is more focused on pet taking the pain for him, but even if that’s not the case, he can muster up incredible self healing (probs best in game now that the druid is here), and tons of evades and escapes, along with real good cc if needed, and few panic buttons if things go south.

Warrior – tough, but not as tough as above two. Warriors face a ceiling when it comes to self sustain – they can’t push their healing far above normal limits like the other two. Warrior is VERY reliant on his default #6 heal, little extras there.

Also while chugged with 0 damage, 0 condies etc panic buttons, they lack any serious damage mitigation once these are on cooldown. Heavy armor doesn’t mean much compared to good access to protection boon, which warriors have zero of.

And lastly warrior has no minions/pets/summons whatsoever. Both necro and ranger can count on their AI companions to take some heat off them, especially the ranger who can even be revived by his own pet! But warrior will always be the center of attention without other players around and no easy way to shake that off…

Guardian.
Soldier/Knights
Signet of Judgment
Runes of the Scrapper
Hammer auto with traited symbols

You don’t need minions to tank for you when you have something like 95% damage reduction up 100% of the time, with passive heals out the butt.

Don’t play warrior. They’re great in PvE, but if you ever feel like trying PvP/WvW, you’ll have by far the worst profession in the game.

Also, ANet has no intention of ever balancing warrior again, so there’s that.

Soa Cirri.6012:

You don’t need minions to tank for you when you have something like 95% damage reduction up 100% of the time, with passive heals out the butt.

Necros don’t need minions tanking for them either… nor need soldiers gear. :P I play a zerk reaper and have found it to be quite good for the new areas.

For me, it’s Necromancer. Because level 80 Reaper Elite Spec feels so-so far away as a level 31 necro using D/D

bLind.6278:

Don’t play warrior. They’re great in PvE, but if you ever feel like trying PvP/WvW, you’ll have by far the worst profession in the game.

Also, ANet has no intention of ever balancing warrior again, so there’s that.

Wrong, in PvP Warrior might not be Meta, but in WvW and PvE Warrior is top notch.

JohnReaper.4058:

What profession is the toughest and can still do great damage? …a class that does not die easy or is forgiving if you forget to roll out of the way first thing.

I think the easiest prof to level is ranger: if you learn to control your pet properly (including drawing aggro, tanking, and swapping), you can live through just about anything without worrying about having the ‘right’ build.

Warrior is forgiving in different ways, but you have to be more careful with a build. If I go mat farming on my warrior, most of the time, I completely ignore foes, something I can’t usually do easily with other profs.

That said, I don’t think you’ll have as much fun using those criteria to choose your prof. It’s easier to develop good/better habits while you are leveling — after 80, there’s a tendency for people to want to really get into the game and re-learning the prof often takes a back seat.

For that reason, I suggest choosing the prof that strikes you as the most fun. Like you, I am drawn to ranged casters. But when GW2 launched, I spent a lot of time running a dagger/dagger ele and learning to swap attunements. There are a lot of fun skills and I had a great time, even as I struggled to learn how the class and how to play a squishy in melee.

I don’t think ele is the ‘best’ choice for everyone; I just used it to illustrate how choosing a fun-to-play class also helped me to learn the game, whereas I learned a lot less (and had less fun) playing ‘safe’ professions.

tl;dr choose a prof that is fun for you.

Necromancer.

The toughest profession? Cleaning out the centaur toilets at Restoration Refuge. Now that’s a dirty job.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

The toughest profession? Cleaning out the centaur toilets at Restoration Refuge. Now that’s a dirty job.

And here I was going to go with hero-cleanup-duty in EBG… horse manure’s not as terrible to clean up as all the dead bodies/blood/rusted weapons/unlooted junk left after the zerg’s been through…

Does a lot of damage to you if you step on a broken Norn greatsword, too.