Guild Wars 2

I have yet to get higher than level 30. I just can’t settle on a profession! Sorry, had to put class in the topic title to get it to fit.

Every time I try to get back into GW2, I start a new profession but usually I just lose interest. Nothing has really GRABBED me.

What I’ve tried so far

I first tried Warrior, but there wasn’t much variety in the gameplay, even while carrying around a weapon of each usable type. Plus 100 Blades was too good not to spam.

Then I tried Engineer, which had a ton of variety! But the damage was so pitiful. Every battle was a life or death coin toss, a single add meant certain doom, and mobs that took my warrior a few seconds to defeat would take up half a minute of my Engineer’s time. It felt like I had started playing on the game’s hardest difficulty setting.

Then I tried Guardian, who was alright and really helpful with his buffs and stuff, but I didn’t like the class’s aesthetics (never was into Paladins/Holy characters) and he was a Charr – who I really like in concept, but the way armor looks on them is so bleurgh.

So now I’m trying to figure out which of the remaining five professions I want to play.

What I want is a prof that can…

1) Solo well. I don’t need to be able to solo champions, but I don’t want to have to ask for help with Skill Challenges two levels below me, like I had to do with my Engineer.

2) Do great single-target damage. I’m not a fan of laying down AoEs. I like focusing on one dude, dropping him, moving onto the second dude, drop him, and so forth.

3) But I also want him to be able to take a little bit of a beating. I don’t have the fastest reflexes in the world, so I’d rather not play a profession that can be dead before you realize what even happened.

4) And I would also like a lot of options in how I play. I’m not sure if there’s a profession like this, but for example – one day I can play as a direct damage sort of guy, then the next I can focus on DoTs, and then the day after that I can specialize in debuffs, and perhaps the day after that I might even be able to dabble in a little AoE if the mood takes me. That’s just an example. I just want to be able to mix things up with my playing style when all the wandering around and doing events starts to run together into one big zergy mudslide.

I know there might not be a profession that fits all these criteria…

But I’d like to get the closest I can. I’d even be willing to give the three professions I’ve already tried a second look, if someone can make a good case for it.

Thanks for your time! Sorry for being so fickle.

I don’t know if this matches 4) but I just hit 61 on my Mesmer today and I feel that Mesmers are total hax both on land and in water. (PvE, I don’t PvP and hardly ever WvW). Amazingly tough when downed, lots of flexible play.

My Mesmer doesn’t even have an RP persona and I’m loving playing her, which is nigh unheard of for me. Generally RP drives my leveling.

I don’t know if anything can meet 4) for you unless you want to spend money retraiting a lot. However, since I tend to settle in to one gameplay style per character, others should be better able to address that.

I think you should try ranger. It fits the first three criteria really well; rangers are great at soloing, they have three weapons that are good at single target damage (shortbow, longbow and sword/dagger), and you can use tough pets like bears and pigs to take damage for you, or use greatsword to defend yourself. The fourth criteria is pretty difficult to match for any profession, but if you keep a good copy of every weapon available to ranger in your inventory you should be fairly versatile.
However, what I think works best when choosing a profession is trying all the professions for about 20 levels and seeing which one you like best.

Sounds like you might like Ranger or Mesmer as others have said.
Mesmers are very very versatile as well as fun and they are virtually indestructible, they do kill slowly though compared to other classes.
Ranger is the perfect solo class and they give a lot of freedom because of that- they are not as engaging as Mesmer but i really enjoy my Ranger.

I would have said Engineer and I have no idea why you dislike them.
Engi and Mesmer are the mokittenn imo and I find my Engi as survivable as my Mesmer- she just kills a lot faster and I mean a lot

your best options seem to be engi or mesmer, they can both easily run conditions or power and are both in the top 4 professions damage wise, although if you had problems levelling an engi your going to RQ within 10 minutes of starting a mesmer as they dont get strong until 40, honestly if you had problems leveling an engi your only options as far as easy leveling are going to be guardian and warrior, so far ive leveled every profession to 80 and in order from easiest to hardest engi, guard, and warrior were by far the fastest to 80

Morrigan.2809:

I would have said Engineer and I have no idea why you dislike them. Engi and Mesmer are the mokittenn imo and I find my Engi as survivable as my Mesmer- she just kills a lot faster and I mean a lot

The OP has played Warrior, Guardian and Engineer, and only as high as 30. If you compare the damage of the other two classes to Engineer at early levels, the Engineer will be seen as inferior damage-wise. This is designed into the class by ANet’s philosphy.

As the Engineer gets closer to 80, s/he can compensate for low damage coefficients on rifle/pistol skills by using kits — and traits to augment those kits. For example:

• Grenades are very weak until you can take the Grandmaster trait at level 60
• Bombs do excellent damage, but require you to be in close. At higher levels, more trait points and more stat points on gear means that you can stack Toughness as well as Power

And my Mesmer can still out-damage my Engineer. While this is not true for you, it is likely this is due to how you have the two characters specced, not something inherent in the classes themselves.

You too can’t decide even after 9+ months?
welcome to the club bro!

I’d suggest you ranger.

Thanks for all the advice, everyone!

I decided to try out a Mesmer, and I like it so far, but I’m not in love with it.

I really like the look and feel of the class, and having clones of me popping up all the time is really cool.

I’ve already died a few times, though, but I was expecting that since everyone talks about how challenging it is to get to 30/40 on a Mesmer. I definitely plan on sticking with it longer!

I’m unclear on how clones and shattering work, though. What dictates when a clone disappears on its own? I keep trying to build to 3 clones but they keep vanishing before I can get all the way there.

In general, clones disappear when
a) you shatter them,
b) they are killed by an enemy,
c) the enemy they are targeting dies or
d) you create more than three clones (the forth clone will cause the first to disappear) (except that a clone will only cause a phantasm to disappear if you have 3 phantasms up, otherwise it will replace another clone)

Hi my name is Luimes and I am a rerollaholic…

I feel you. I just 80 every profession and then decide on a main. Necro has my best interrest so far

Honestly, I have to say that Mesmer was worth it for me in the end. Mesmers really suck to play in the beginning, but if you see them through, you’ll be glad you did. This is my experience at least. I rolled a Mesmer, got him to 80, then rolled a thief, abandoned it, rolled a warrior, got him to 80, rolled a thief again, leveled it to 80, abandoned it because I hated it, created an elementalist and abandoned it because I didn’t have the patience to roll through the same leveling content another time, and then decided to check back on my Mesmer.

And then I loved him again.

I played a lot of Melee classes, and I’ve found that S/P or S/S was a lot of fun to play. I used to play Staff, and I liked it, especially when playing with condition damage because I could get 3k on a single stack of confusion. But now, getting back into Melee is a lot of fun. I especially like Mesmer because I don’t hate their legendary skins. Mesmer is fun to play with a GS (as opposed to warrior, which I hated for some reason) and you get 2 (or three) good GS skins, you have the Bitfrost staff, which I personally think looks badass, or you get Bolt, which may be one of my favorite Legendaries because they look awesome and aren’t overused.

So yes, after learning to play the game and returning on my Mesmer, I’m really loving playing it. See it through to level 80, try different things (because playstyle changes dramatically depending on the weapon for Mesmer, I can attest to that), and bond with it. Give it a story. And have fun!

I started the game with a necromancer and then made a elementalist, warrior and guardian and I have to say the necromancer fits well quite well.

1) Yes, it is possible to solo with necromancer as long you don’t fight 3+ enemies on the same level as you. Even though you’re squishy (lots of health → taking in quite a bunch of attacks) you might go down too fast if there are too many enemies on the same level as you (referring to the effective level). Thus skill fights are no problem in almost all cases. Plus if your health near to null you have death shroud to do heavy attacks and take in some more. (You can also use death shroud to get off any height or easily solve jumping puzzles were you only need to get down to a certain point and on jumping puzzles were you die when you fall off you can try again instead of requiring to teleport)

2) All of the necromancers skills are single target with the exception of staff. Which are near/range AoE’s unfortunately. The damage of attacks is either low with high DPS or low with debuffing the enemy to ignore x% of it’s armor making the end damage high again.

3) You will require to dodge every now and when an enemy uses special attacks or when agony attacks (in case you’re going to do Fractals of the Mists). However as I already mentioned the necromancer is a squishy class. He can soak up quite some attacks and in case the life goes too low he has the death shroud which allows him to soak up even more attacks.

4) There are a few classes though not many which allow a hell lot of builds.
Warrior belongs to the ones with not as much builds (sure there is berserker, tank and etc.) but there aren’t as many as guardian, elementalist or necromancer.

Elementalist can be skilled on healing, berserker, tank, hybrid, condition damage, arcane etc.
Guardian can be skilled on full support, berserker, tank, hybrid, healing, retaliation, ritualist etc.
Necromancer can be skilled on berserker, tank, hybrid, condition damage, death master, minions, blood seeking, etc.