Guild Wars 2

Hey, two of my friends and I just picked up the game, and so far we love it to death, especially WvW. We want to start some Norn or Charr characters to focus on, for both PvE (mainly leveling, maybe an occasional dungeon) and PvP (primarily WvW, but we’re most likely going to try other stuff as well).

Personally, I want to be a warrior for the damage and playstyle. I was wondering what would be the best choice for my friends. I know a support role would be nice, but having two melee, heavy armor players kind of gets on my nerves. That being said, I’ve heard engineer can be a support role, but I’m not too sure how engineer support works, as Guardian support is pretty straight forward to start out with.

Finally, to fill the light armor category, what would be the best damage role, or best CC that can do well in both PvE and PvP scenarios?

I hope this makes sense, and thank you in advance to anyone that answers.

Any class composition can mesh well, provided the players understand their classes, the combat, and coordinate well. Classes also get rebalanced a lot, so class interaction changes constantly. So overall, I’d recommend your friends try whatever classes they’re interested in and play what they enjoy most- if all of you are passionate about playing and learning your classes, then you’ll all do much better than if you played something just because.

That being said, I can give a few pointers. Firstly, read DreamyAbbadon’s combat guide: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Combat-System-101-Guide/first It explains the combat in the game extremely well, and highlights the fact that every class is capable of bringing damage, support, and control to a fight.

Regarding the classes, here’s a rundown of all of them: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ojgdr/what_class_should_i_play_a_summary_of_each/ Some bits of it may be outdated or omit some notable class abilities (ele might stacking and ranger spirits), but it’s a good overview overall.

About engineers- engineers are primarily a CC class in PvP, as they have access to a massive amount of interrupts, debilitating conditions, and snares. In PvE, they contribute by stacking vulnerability and CCing regular mobs, as well as supporting with a mixed bag of tricks. Engis most notably cleanse conditions, provide group heals (both gradual and burst), and stack swiftness, but also have versions of other profession abilities- they can make smoke fields for others to combo with in order to stealth groups, make fire fields for might, block projectiles, grant stability, and likely some other tricks I’ve missed. (kitten it Anet, release Tengu already so I can remake my engi.)

Regarding the light classes, all of them have different types of CC. Mesmer’s CC is single-target for the most part, and revolves around interrupting and punishing enemy attacks. Necro’s control is based around stacking lots of painful conditions that weaken the enemy’s ability to attack. Elementalist’s CC is the most AoE-oriented, and is based heavily upon controlling the movement of many enemies at once, examples being fields of frost that reduce enemy movement to a crawl, crippling foes with rings of stones, making walls of lightning or earth that can’t be crossed without stability, and so on.

As for damage (PvE-wise), mesmers are primarily a support class in PvE- while they can put out high damage, they are outdamaged by multiple classes. Necros have less raw power, but can do high damage while increasing others’ damage by stacking vulnerability on enemies. Elementalist has the highest straight damage, with DPS nearly on par with thieves and above warriors under the right circumstances (with the added benefit of it being AoE), and can stack massive amounts of might and fury on allies. However, they are extremely hard to play in straight DPS roles and tend to fare best in highly organized groups. As for PvP damage, it varies depending on build, situation, and opponent.

Hopefully that gave you guys a starting point. My primary suggestion is the same, though- find something you like, understand it, and you’ll be just fine.

3x same class, its always fun to see how your friends’ characters end up compared with yours.