Guild Wars 2

Ok so I’m brand new to GW 2 .. I played DAoC and EQ back in the day .. Hardcore EQ player back when it was just vanilla.
I loved playing a Bard in EQ and tend to gravitate to classes that are jack of all trades and have lots of options.
Does this game offer any classes like that?
Thx in advance for any tips and advice!

I think guardians are usually agreed to be the most well rounded class out there. Although they have a low health pool, they have many reactionary skills, heals and blocks which make them one of the harder classes to take down. Lots of condition removal, boons for the team and virtues which both have a passive and active benefit. They also hit quite hard as well if specced to be so. Basically, they are one of the most favored classes in PVE and in WvW teams simply by the fact they benefit everyone around them.

Only thing they truly lack is mobility, although depending on the weapons used, they have a fair number of gap closers in combat.

I’d say the most jack-of-all-trades class in GW2 is engineer, as it has access to a large amount of combo fields and combo finishers, which when combined allow for party-wide buffing, as well as very varied skills/utilities/weapon kits to adjust to situations.

An engineer who knows what they’re doing can stack offensive buffs (might is a big one), provide big burst heals through blasting their water field, give stealth to the party and cleanse conditions, but they also provide maximum attack range with their grenade kits (good for pulling enemies to your group without putting yourself at risk), top tier direct damage and access to a lot of conditions and debuffs. It also has access to a projectile reflect/block, which is very useful if the party is lacking guardians/mesmers whose job that usually is or to help them in projectile-heavy situations where they might run out of cooldowns.

It’s considered one of the difficult classes to master and I see people suggesting to keep it for an alt once you’ve gotten the basics of GW2 combat down, but in my experience it’s fine even as a newbie (my first character was an engie and I had tons of fun while leveling). I’d say if versatility is your thing then it might very well be a fun class for you.

Depend of what you mean exactly by jack-of-all trades.

Engineer will be able to do a lot of things with the same build. You have access to a good number of blast and field from fire for mighting up to smoke for stealth to water for heal. You can do condi build, power build or hybrid build. Its also one of the Top profession in sPvP and WvW Roaming. It can do the job in WvW Zerg and PvE, but its not on top.

Elementalist have a more limited access to different stuff with one particular build, but its close second to engineer. Where is shine compare to the Engineer is that its a TOP profession in every aspect of the game. Its the only profession that’s worth taking more than once in dungeon, its the best profession with engineer in spvp right now, its a good roaming profession with extreme mobility and its one of the 4 main profession in any good WvW zerg guild.

But for both of these profession this come at a cost. They are some of the hardest profession to master if you want to reach their true potential.

Jack of all Trades would most likely be the Engineer.