Guild Wars 2

Hi there! Just bought this game and wanted to pop in and say hello. Was looking for a casual MMO and this is where I ended up, hopefully I’m in the right place. Having a bit of a time wrapping my head around how thing work, but I guess I’ll get there in time.

I’v experimented with a couple of classes in the every early stages (warrior and guardian) but haven’t gotten serious because I want to make sure things suit me, as I will most likely only have time for one character currently.

I was intrigued by this games concept of WvW and am over eager to get involved in that. I really like the way this game builds a story and am looking forward to PvE fun on my way to WvW (when I’m ready, of course).

I’ve done some reading and some playing, but this game has thrown me a bit of a monkey wrench. Not to go into specifics, but for my own reasons I use gaming peripherals to simplify the use of actionbars and such in MMOs. These are what I currently use:

Razer Tartarus
Razer Deathadder

I have enough room for WASD and 1-9 on the pad, as well as tab. The mouse has 2 buttons which I use to use focus targets. Right now I’m using them for F and Esc, but that may change. Haven’t yet figured out where to put the F keys. Didn’t really expect on MMO to use them :P.

With that said, is there anyone with more knowledge that can help guide me through professions. I’d like to say I’m not looking for “easy” or “least buttons” but I kind of am. This game threw a lot at me in the beginning. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the “Holy Trinity” of MMOs has gone away somewhat.

My main goal is to just play a character, be effective and help my groups, and have fun. Not dead set on any specific way to do that. Not sure where I’ll end up, but that’s half the fun I guess.

The easiest classes are Warrior, Guardian, Ranger and Necromancer. But honestly try what you think looks cool and not what seems easy, you’ll learn it sooner or later and if you just pick a class because it’s easy you may get bored of it later. In the end it’s the playstyle what makes a class fun to play, not how long it took you to learn it.

Its too vast to explain something in a post, you will need to play the game with a character to learn the base. But there some things to help you choose a profession to pick. There is basically 3 modes you can play in the game. PvE (dungeon, fractals, world boss, etc), sPvP and Roaming (small encounter, 1v1, etc), WvW Zerg vs Zerg (Big encounter, raid, organized group or big pug blop, etc).

In each of these ’’mode’’ you can get things done with any profession. There is no profession that so freaking bad, that you can’t complete any stuff with it. (whatever some ppl say, if you are a good player with a good build, even the worst profession can do better than most people in this game) But there is better profession at some of these modes.

PvE : Warrior, Elementalist, Guardian, Thief and Mesmer are the best for that. Engineer can do a decent job, while Ranger and Necro have a really bad reputation.

sPvP and WvW Roaming : Mesmer, Necro and Thief are some of the best at this, but pretty much any profession can do a great job. Keep in mind that things move around a lot in sPvP with some build being flavour of the month before people figure out how to beat the new build more frequently. So things can change a lot even with no new patch.

WvW Zerg : If you are in a pug blop, numbers is the way to go, so you want only someone that survive and do AoE. Profession like Warrior, Guardian, Necro, Elementalist, and Engineer are the best at that. If you want to go more into organized group, Warrior, Guardian, Necro and Elementalist will form the core of your group with Thief and Mesmer filling some specific roles.

Welcome to Guild Wars 2! When I first started this game I hadn’t played an mmo in over 10 years, so trust me, if I eventually wrapped my head around this game you will too.

My first character was a guardian. I would say the guardian can be very survivable in the early stages (when I wasn’t being a total noob) thus being a little more forgiving to new players. It is also one of the easier classes to learn IMO. But of course that’s just based on my own experience.

I’ve leveled 7/8 professions so far and all of them have been fun. But if I were you I would just pick one that sounds interesting and go with it. Being new to the game there will be a learning curve regardless of the profession you choose.

If you ever need any help/advice/someone to say hey to, feel free to message me in game.

Every profession will end up with 10 buttons you want to use a lot. For now avoid Elementalist and Engineer as they require the most extra button mashing since they make heavy use of the F1 to F4 keys and get frequent complete swaps of the 1-5 skills.

Mesmer is imo the most fun for PvE once you figure out good clone/phantasm management, but also needs a lot of F1 to F4. I’d save that for when you have the basics down. Note I may be biased: of my 13 80’s, 3 are mesmers, I only have 1 each of the Medium Armor profs and an Elementalist, and I have 2 each of everything else.

I would suggest guardian unless you feel a deep need to do large DPS. My first PvE main was my thief; now he’s pretty much for RP and for Living Story, because I tried dungeons on my guardian traited to support/defense and loved the survivability and utility. The weapons and traits you pick will affect your play, but the F1 to F4 keys can be used on cooldown without too much thought (caveat: you will always do better if you use a skill or special button only in the right circumstances — but at least with Guardian there’s less punishment for a “misfire” as they usually do some good whenever pressed). You can design a Guardian for DPS, it just won’t match professions that lean more naturally to that role. Me, though, if I end the fight alive and the monster is dead, I don’t mind that it took a little extra time.

Still, every profession is full of people who think it’s hands down the best and people that can’t abide playing it. Are you sure the Mists trick doesn’t work any more? Did they remove full level 80 settings when you’re in the sPvP area? That surprises me, if so. You should be able to do sPvP without doing any PvE at all unless they completely trashed that core design.

I use an ordinary keyboard and a Razer Hex Naga (which has 6 buttons). Not counting the WASD for movement, I often use 14 keys in my keyboard, including the F1-F4 functions keys. The other keys are for optional functions. As for the Hex Naga, I use 5 of the buttons for main functions, so that brings a total of 19 essential keys for my liking. I was planning to buy a Tartarus myself, but seeing this thread made me have second thoughts. My only definite advise is to give the dodge function more importance than the jump function. Map the dodge function to where you usually map the jump button. Dodging is a very crucial aspect of this game, especially in PvP. If you can, map your configuration so you can move and dodge at the same time. I had my space bar mapped to dodge, instead of jump.

It may take you some time to ‘discover’ the many wonderful combinations available to you in selecting your play style—regardless of the profession.

For example, by selecting armour with statistic combinations, and also applying appropriate runes to that armour, and then applying sigils to your weapons and then selecting appropriate traits, and finally skills, you can make any profession fit your play style.

It’s so flexible and fun. Collecting the gold and/or materials to obtain the gear you want to reach your play style is part of the journey and fun also. Enjoy!