Guild Wars 2

After reading, watching, and trying out the different professions, I can’t decide on which to consider my main character. What’s really holding me back from grasping a choice, is the role I’ve played in other MMORPGs (ex. EQ, WoW, Rift). I’ve always had a healer as my main priority, and never really changed from that. It’s what I enjoy doing most, even though I understand GW2 doesn’t have that trinity. With that said, hopefully someone can help shed some light.

[Warrior and Thief] – I find them to be boring, yet designed real well. I was never one who liked physical melee dps, since I like flashy stuff.

[Ranger and Necromancer] – I’m not one who enjoys pet management, and the Necromancer doesn’t fit my style.

[Elementalist] – Controlling each elemental is neat, though I don’t care for stance dancing.

[Engineer] – With all it’s gadgets, scares me. It seems daunting I mean, with everything that’s apart of their toolkit.

[Guardian] – It’s a neat profession and at least has some spark apart of their spells, but I’m not sure if I want to create one right now (or make one my main character).

[Mesmer] – I’ve been playing around with this profession the most. I do enjoy it, but it seems it will take awhile before I grasp the concept. It is quite confusing to pickup on.

[Your preferred playstyle and fighting personality.]
- Support mostly, defensive otherwise.

[Do you like to be in the enemy’s face, beating them down with pure power?]
- I never liked being in melee range.

[Or do you prefer cunning and trickery, leaving your opponents on edge and unsure of how to act?]
- Cunning and trickery.

[Do you like physical prowess or magical finesse?]
- Magical Finesse

[Flash or subtlety?]
- Flash

[Agility or resilience?]
- Resilience

[Your gaming experience or comfort level. Are you a beginner to gaming or a veteran?]
- Veteran (ten years).

[How comfortable would you be with varying levels of difficulty?]
- I’m fine with any level of difficulty. I need to give it time.

[What are you looking for in a class? High damage, strong group support, head-spinning speed? What is most important to you?]
- Strong group support.

[What content are you planning to do? PvE or PvP?]
- I’m planning to do both, but mostly PvE when I feel like leveling to 80. For PvP, it’s casual gameplay.

[What roles do you like to take in them? Are you a roamer in PvP or a group fighter?]
- I like group fighting the most.

Mesmer can do it all (not at the same time obviously but you have the option for all and can be decent at it.) You have null field (AOE condition removal), Feedback (reflect ranged), veil (invisibility), mass invisibility, chaos storm (staff 5 random buffs and combo field), winds of chaos (staff auto), and clones draw aggro and can break enemy AI for PvE. Not many mesmers like their clones drawing aggro but it can be a powerful tool if you know what you’re doing.

Elementalist has good support including being the only class that has a direct healing skill. Your conjured weapons can be picked up by others to up their DPS as well (You get one and it creates one on the ground). Water daggers cure conditions and heal, wind daggers have an interrupt for enemies, staff has ton of combo fields as well as earth auto inflicting weakness.

Guardian is the favored choice, the staff stacking might. I hear engineer is good support as well but I have never really payed attention that much.

Support mightstacker S/F elementalist. You’ll still have the damage, you’ll boon better than anyone else, and you get a mid-strong ish heal to boot. If you wanna melee there’s Lightning Hammer for damage; otherwise you don’t really need to be close to use many of the skills.

Or: boon guardian with Altruistic Healing trait.

Honestly you’ve just described an Engineer (apart from the magical part of course). I’d advise you try it out. Try running a few Elixirs and a kit or two to mix the support/damage you’re asking for. Possibly something like this (btw no idea about PvE traits. My Engineer is built for WvW so the traits are rather different.) -
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vcAQJAqalcTp6q1XxELseBA-zUyAYrASQAICgJwioxWbLiGraBTdSEV7Nw8HER1AA-w

Thanks for the help. I’ll look over what you all advised, and hopefully I can make the right decision.

I’d highly recommend Guardian or Mesmer based on your post.

Both professions perform well in every aspect of the game and both offer the most support to their teammates (Elementalist is right behind, in my opinion).

With the sole exception of not liking melee, you’ve described a Guardian. I’d honestly give that a try.

Ele is another that fits the bill, but they’re squishy, not resilient. Lots of magic and healing, but not much defensive boon sharing or anything. Just raw healing.

Mesmer is fun, flashy, and has lots of boon sharing. Not much raw healing but a lot of reflects and ethereal fields.