Guild Wars 2

I played GW2 for a few months after release but got burnt out on gaming all together about then and took a long break. I would like to jump back in and experience the main story and pve lines in the game but am not sure where the classes stand now a days. I doubt I will do any pvp so that shouldn’t be a factor. I remember enjoying the ranger, elementalist (although I was terrible at it), and mezmer back in the day if that gives any idea of my play style.

Thanks for any help or advice!

If you enjoyed ranger, ele and mesmer, you should stick with these. It is most important to just have fun, as there is no class that really stands out at the moment. Ranger is currently a bit behind the others, but it is getting buffed in September and it is quite a good solo profession already.

So no class stands out as a top PVE class? I guess that says a lot for where balancing is in the game.

If you think a mmo is balanced around solo and story wich is the easiest thing in the game you can complete naked and upleveled, that says a lot about your experience in balancing. Best solo classes in pve are eles and warrior, if by best we understand maximum dps and easiest self buffing.

I’m not sure I’d say that. Guardians and Warriors are considered top of the line, or eles if you’re looking for something more difficult to play.

However, open world content can be done with ANY profession.

Warrior is one of best classes for PVE if you tend to pug a lot, you will literally never need another class. Eles might be better for speedruns but I never use mine for pugs anymore, they are too squishy and get downed a lot. The other classes that have good survivability are guardian and thief, they are the only other ones that are useful.

nagr.1593:

Warrior is one of best classes for PVE if you tend to pug a lot, you will literally never need another class. Eles might be better for speedruns but I never use mine for pugs anymore, they are too squishy and get downed a lot. The other classes that have good survivability are guardian and thief, they are the only other ones that are useful.

But he’s talking about exploring and soloing not pugging.

my bad, didn’t read the OP closely enough. For soloing or exploring, warrior is also a good choice and they have decent mobility to get around (though thief is better for this). I soloed most of open world on my glass ele though (including skill points in higher lvl maps), so if you can do that then really any class will be ok.

I sort of like ranger for open world soloing mostly because of the 3 downed skill. When I’m soloing difficult content, that’s saved me quite a few times.

I’ve done this (mainly open world PvE map completion and events) with mesmer, warrior, necromancer, guardian and I’m doing elementalist.

Of those I’d say warrior is strongest for just smacking down a regular monster. Warriors do a lot of damage, and have a lot of hitpoints.

Guardian is decent in straight hitting power but relies on blocking and blinding enemies more than hitpoints. It’s more flexible, e.g. it has a decent spammable AoE on staff for farming big non-boss events. I’d say my guardian is my most useful character.

Necro is the one I enjoy most. It does a bit of this and a bit of that, it keeps things interesting, it doesn’t top any DPS tables but seems to do better than the numbers say it should.

I was disappointed in the mesmer, I think it’s a pale imitation of the GW1 mesmer. Plus it’s buggy, and I should have known how miserable sidekick AI would be after 30 years of playing computer RPGs. I only use mine when I want to do something on every character. Also, I think it’s fair to say that even people who like playing level 80 mesmers think they’re a pain to level.

I made the ele 2 years ago and abandoned him at level 23 because it was just too twitch, especially with an elbow injury (which has since cleared up). But now I’m levelling him to have another character to do living story and so on. Watch any ele guide on youtube by DEKeyzToChaos and see if the rotation looks like your idea of fun.

The one I haven’t played but quite fancy is thief. I’m many times better at dancing around in a fight than I was when I made my characters two years ago, and a backstabbing class does appeal to me.

If I may give you one piece of advice… Invest some time reading the guilds forum here, and find one you like. Don’t just join the first one that’s recruiting.

And another bit… Melee, don’t range, and learn to dodge. You will never be any good at this game if you range.