Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m relatively new to the game and have just tested all 8 professions a little, however, i still can’t decide.

I was wondering what professions in your opinion are highly demanded in spvp at the moment and perhaps a “glass-cannon” class which is what i usually prefer in most mmo’s.

P.S i was thinking out of Thief, Mesmer, Ranger, Guardian.

Thanks in advance

Thief = Super Easy Mode (Roll head on keyboard to win)
Mesmer = Easy Mode (Braindead Monkey pushing buttons to win)
Guardian = Useless DPS (Fat kid eating cake style)

Ranger = Normal Mode (Bring the Skill no the Class)

Choose your destiny!

if you are a glass cannon type of player, thief (full crit/power build) would suit you i would suggest. Hit like a truck, but you will get killed if you are ever hit

@Deepblue … wtf? Is that supposed to be helpful?

Thief is a very chaotic playstyle. It requires you to pop skills at the exact right time with perfect positioning. The reward is bringing someone from full health to none in seconds. Stealth is your best friend for both offense and defense, but if someone is able to control you long enough while your stealth is on CD, lights out.

Mesmer is the current “1v1 King”. Which may do wonders to boost your ego, but many mesmers don’t help the team simply because they’re looking to 1v1. However, mesmers have a large variety of utility (teleports, time warp) that greatly help group fights. There’s a happy medium of single target and support to be found in there with some good burst if you spec into it. Due to the nature of the mesmer, I don’t think of them so much as “glass cannon” .. they have some ramp up time and lots of utilities to escape.

I have not yet tried Ranger, but from what I’ve heard (can’t always believe what you hear…) ranger is more of a “jack of all trades” rather than a specific damage profession.

Guardian… you would be hard pressed to come up with a guardian build that was pure glass cannon and didn’t offer any support (to self or others).

Other professions you might want to consider:

Engineer: Lots of kits can be overwhelming, but you can create some unique builds that allow you to output a ton of damage in neat ways (ex, getting the trait that zaps a player when using a toolbelt skill and focusing on using toolbelt skills on cooldown.. lots of burst!). Engineer definitely has some “glass cannon” viable builds.

Warriors: Obvious choice.. they have some great damage output. Many find the playstyle too straightforward and boring.. but many also enjoy it.

Necromancer: I haven’t played necro as long as some of the other classes, but necro traits seem to shine when it comes to conditions. Unfortunately, conditions need to be shown a little love by ANet. I’m sure you could find some other builds that focus less on conditions, but I guess I never saw necro as a glass cannon. Could be very wrong here.

Edit: Forgot elementalist. I feel like someday, elementalist will get some love and people will play them more often. Right now, they are disregarded by many as “useless”, however I still see quite a few around. I think people just like to overreact. If you don’t mind switching between elements fairly often, elementalist will probably have quite a bit to offer in terms of high damage output.

In summary: I think you should look into Thief with mesmer/engineer as a secondary.

Thanks Mongo. That was really helpful!

So sad though; i was initially very interested in the elementalist till i heard so many ‘underpowered’ claims about them :/

Hey Taka,

i’m also relative new to the game but i have been playing with a Ranger for some time and i love it.
There’s a lot off talk about Ranger and what weapon to use, and i can only speak for myself. But i love my Ranger and his longbow skills. It’s a prof that needs some thinking ahead when you play it (keeping your distance and calculate the cooldowns to max damage, charming new pets etc.)
I can’t really tell you if it would suit you (not really a ‘glass canon’ in my opinion) but give it a good try.
As for Elementalist, its like Mongo says, not the most populair prof atm. I have tried it and it does work and gave me heaps off fun when playing ‘in a group’.
I think that Elem needs some support to survive in the early game (haven’t reached mid or end game area’s so no idea how that is for either Ranger or Elem). As long as there where other people in the area and on the same “quest”, i could play great with my Elem, but when i was really solo, it takes a lot off considering and sometimes a lot off running away to survive.

Just my idea’s, hope they help you a bit!

If you really want to try elementalist, don’t let people dissuade you! I played one for about 20 levels and the only part I couldn’t really get over was swapping elements regularly. However I never saw them under-performing in terms of 1-20 PvE – was still killing things pretty quickly. If they are in fact weaker than the rest, it’s 1) Not as a big of a difference as everyone makes out to be and could just be a “L2P” issue or 2) ANet will fix it. There’s a solution to be found in either case.

My point is, if you really want to try it, go for it. No one should be convincing you not to.

TakaEagle.9486:

Thanks Mongo. That was really helpful!

So sad though; i was initially very interested in the elementalist till i heard so many ‘underpowered’ claims about them :/

The people claiming that they are underpowered are just staying in one stance, or have no idea how to use combo fields and finishers.

Right, like I said, it may just be a learning issue.

Elementalists, like all professions, require you to change stances/sets/kits to get the most out of the profession. I don’t know much of the specifics of it, but I imagine most of it is getting used to what the 4 elements offer and knowing what to use in each situation. Fire seemed to be all about consistent damage, water was support and healing, air was high crits and movespeed, earth was slower aoe and debuffs.

I think you would primarily focus on 3 elements due to how your trait points would be spread out.. but it looks like it’s all about knowing what each element offers, comboing the abilities and switching to the right element for that situation.

Stevoli, i guess you’re talking about elementalists.
I must agree that i haven’t yet master the gameplay for that profession and indeed, you need to “learn” this game.
Most people out there just expect to instantly master a profession and then they go complaining that every game is the same.
When they find a game that is not the same as the other ones, they go complaining that its to hard or that the profession is “underpowered”.

So again, nice input from all

Thing to remember with elementalists is …it isn’t that the elements are situational, it is how they are played TOGETHER that makes a difference. You do not switch to water to go into a “healing” stance, you go into water pop the 2 water fields then switch to earth for your projectile finisher, or fire for a blast finisher, or use arcane blast to finish for very very good aoe healing. Or ice field depending on your weapon and proc aoe ice shield.
Aoe runspeed is about the same thing but with air field you use several blast finishers to stack the duration.
Also the people around you are going to want to take advantage of your fields, everyone can trigger the heals from water, everyone can trigger runspeed from air…
Hope that helps, I don’t like seeing such an intricate and engaging class blown off so quickly.

Mongo.2490:

I feel like someday, elementalist will get some love and people will play them more often. Right now, they are disregarded by many as “useless”, however I still see quite a few around. I think people just like to overreact.

And there you have it! I’ve seen this before and I’m not surprised to see it here. I commented yesterday on another thread to this effect. There are a lot of players who want to play a class, try it, find they can’t play it, and then blame the class. Consequently, there are always a lot of people who claim (or whine) “This class is UP”. In the meanwhile, the skilled players get on with making the class work and, when they run into a problem, they change their play style. As my sig on other forums reads, Good players adapt, bad players whinge; which are you?

I’ve seen claims for several classes being UP. My main is an Engineer, which Anet have acknowledged to be broken. Yet I can still cheerfully solo round Orr (once I made the adjustment to “this place is lethal”, rather than “I can run round here just like everywhere else”). Funny that. So is it the class? No. I think it’s the player.

I’ve 5 alts at L15+. In my opinion, taking an alt to L5 – 7 will give you a basic feel for how it plays. Taking it to L15 should mean you’ve opened up all the skills on all the land weapons (where you spend most of your time). If you still REALLY don’t like it at that point, you’re probably not going to get on with it full time. If you’re not so sure…

The beauty of GW2 is that a single class can be built at least a dozen different ways. However some builds are VERY dependent on trait lines, so you’re probably going to need to take a class to L40 (20 trait points in a single line) to really get a feel for it. That’s quite a commitment. Can’t give you an easy answer, I’m afraid; hope this one is of some use!

Raedwulf.3712:

The beauty of GW2 is that a single class can be built at least a dozen different ways. However some builds are VERY dependent on trait lines, so you’re probably going to need to take a class to L40 (20 trait points in a single line) to really get a feel for it. That’s quite a commitment. Can’t give you an easy answer, I’m afraid; hope this one is of some use!

Just go out to the sPvP lobby, you instantly hit level 80 and unlock all traits. You can experiment with different builds there.