Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently saved up enough Gold to buy the Sylvari Tier 3 Cultural armor.
http://www.gw2armor.com/sylvari/female/c3/medium/front.jpg
http://huntersinsight.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/caitheseries.jpg

It is the only Cultural armor I really like.
I really need help deciding what profession to pick as I can only buy the armor once and don’t want to make the wrong decision. I love all three of the Adventurer’s.

Ranger -
Surprisingly I really enjoy having a selection of pets and finding/collecting new ones.
I love their Short and Longbow skills but find myself wishing for more AOE, traps are fun though but seem to fall short, for me at least.
I always feel like I am lacking in the damage department.

Thief -
I love their stealth, I enjoy the feeling of knowing that I have an OHKITTEN button that will get me out of bad situations. Their damage is also a plus.
Though after playing an Elementalist as a main I kind of wish for something a bit less squishy.

Engineer -
After having an Ele for a main, kit changing will become easy for me after awhile. Their AOE with grenades is so much fun and not to mention FT. Though.. after running an Ele I kind of wish for two weapons sets but that isn’t much of a problem.
Their utilities seem very support oriented which if I wanted to run support i’d just hop on my Ele.

I really can’t decide, I know I might have made some classes out to be a little bit more negative but I really do enjoy them all the same. Ranger seems to have got a little more stale than the others though and I’m only in my late 20’s.

Edit:

This will be for PvE (with GF) and some Major dungeon running. Slight WvWvW.

Engi is my favorite class as far as “fun” goes. Unfortunately they are also the least effective pve. Anything you can get from an engi in a dungeon you can get from another class that also brings more damage.

Engie is rubbish, nuff said. I’d recommend thief, every dungeon group loves a thief to make them all invisible to run past unnecessary mobs. And actually, in my earlier days a thief would often be my saving grace as they cast invisibility then revive you.

Any other help?

I have a sylvari thief and I’m a big fan of him, but I’m also working on my 2nd ranger. I know that damage is lacking a bit, but hope in feb/march we’ll get some improvements and be a little more on par (would like our range damage to be closer to Warrior and now with Eng kits/turrets starting to get weapon stats/bonus/boons, maybe ranger pets are next). I also like the pets, collecting them experimenting with them. The AI isn’t the best, but it’s worlds better than Necro minions. I think my new asura ranger will try out a melee trap build, but there’s a lot of versitilty, so who knows. Another point for ranger would be it fits pretty well with the Sylvari nature theme (though again, I have a sylvari thief that rocks too). What’s your GF running, maybe think what would work best in combo with her.

I’m heavily biased towards Rangers (always have been, since I started playing RPGs), so that would be my recommendation. I’ll say that the AoE lack can be resolved in a few ways:

1) Run an Axe/Axe weapon set – it’s an effective multi-target auto-attack, and the off-hand skills are very nice as well. I usually open with a Bow, and switch to the Axes if there are a lot of targets, or if I get hemmed into melee range.

2) River Drake. You have to pay attention to which way the little guy is facing, and where the enemies move during his cast, but if you can connect with the lightning breath attack, it’s a boatload of damage across all the targets near his nose.

3) Run a longbow, and get the trap-hucking trait in Skirmishing. Send your pet in, huck a frost trap to keep them from being able to redirect at you, and then pop Barrage.

DarkHeart.1760:

I have a sylvari thief and I’m a big fan of him, but I’m also working on my 2nd ranger. I know that damage is lacking a bit, but hope in feb/march we’ll get some improvements and be a little more on par (would like our range damage to be closer to Warrior and now with Eng kits/turrets starting to get weapon stats/bonus/boons, maybe ranger pets are next). I also like the pets, collecting them experimenting with them. The AI isn’t the best, but it’s worlds better than Necro minions. I think my new asura ranger will try out a melee trap build, but there’s a lot of versitilty, so who knows. Another point for ranger would be it fits pretty well with the Sylvari nature theme (though again, I have a sylvari thief that rocks too). What’s your GF running, maybe think what would work best in combo with her.

She has a Level 80 Ranger using Longbow/Shortbow and flame trap.

I would say go thief. One ranger in a group is usually plenty.