Guild Wars 2

My friend and I are starting the game together and I just had a couple questions. We are both new to the game and I didn’t see a better forum to ask in.

He is a Human Thief. I want to start in the same area so we can play from the beginning. Is race the only factor in starting areas?

What would be some good compliments to the Thief for duo play?

If I want to play a totally different race is there a way to meet up and play early on?

Thank you in advance.

You can easily meet up in any race starting area. Your race’s starting area is right by your race’s main city. You can go to the Lions Arch portal located in the main city. Once you do so the portals to the other race’s cities are right there.

Will there be any issues if I make a Norn and travel to the human city? and level up from there?

White Wolf.1024:

Will there be any issues if I make a Norn and travel to the human city? and level up from there?

Nope, none at all. A lot of people prefer to start a character in the human starting map, Queensdale, anyway. It’s generally more populated and a bit easier than some of the other races starting areas. So if you are Norn you will want to take the Lions Arch portal in Hoelbrak then go to Divinity’s Reach, the human capital. From there you can go to Queensdale human starter map.

Edit: I should note that if you decide to work on your personal story line you will end up back in your race’s starting area for a bit because that is where the story starts out.

Thanks for the input!

As for class I am attracted to the Mesmer, Ranger, and Engineer. Are any of these better at teaming with a Thief and can any of these do good supporting heals or buffs?

Depends on what you want to do. Rangers tend to be better at healing. Engis do a bit of everything. Mesmers do more damage, and their clones/illusions draw aggro so you/your friend doesn’t have to.

If you run a mesmer you’ll end up killing faster and requiring less healing.
If you run a ranger you’ll end up healing more, and requiring less healing due to pet tanking.
If you run an engi you can change tactics as required, but the skill floor is much higher, and it won’t match either the mesmer or ranger at the things they’re good at.

Frankly, the best complement to a thief is probably a guardian though, but it doesn’t seem like something you’re considering.

Yeah, a heavy class would be good with a thief, but out of the three you want, Ranger is a good starting class. Pet can tank for the two of you, and it’s pretty easy survival wise. Engineer and Mesmer are a bit more difficult to grasp, but they’re fun and useful in their own ways.

If you are teaming with a thief, I would say mesmer. Me and a guildie were messing around in PvP and those illusions would really help you two. There are so many to hit and we found just his illusions could kill me. I was getting hit with 4k damage spikes.

My high school daughter and I duo’ed since launch. All various races, so do not worry about that, just meet up after you portal to lion’s arch and go for it.

that said, of our six level 80’s (we have duo’ed up 3 each), we liked these combo’s. now we did maybe 50/50 split between leveling in pve and wvw. Normally first 40-50 levels PvE then off to WvW to level. So our picks keep that in mind.

1. ranger(shortbow, axe/warhorn) / Elemenalist (scepter/dagger): This was our favorite in all aspects of the game. Just lots to do, good combos and the pet for pve tanking.

2. warrior (hammer, mace/shield) / guardian (staff,/GS): 2nd favorite for us. PVE was really simple. WvW was pretty solid also. Warrior carried a longbow for when needed, of course.

3. Mesmer (GS, sword/focus) and thief (dagger, dagger,/shortbow). This was our least favorite PvE, but was our last duo and we were getting burnt on pve at this point. WvW was really strong combo with the mesmer putting up clones and thief picking off the target(s).

From your three picks, I’d suggest starting with Ranger. Thieves can be very squishy in the beginning, and would benefit from the Ranger’s healing and pet’s tanking abilities.

Mesmer early game can be as difficult, or more, than thief. Light armor and medium health pool, most of their damage is built around illusions which can be difficult to master and hard to keep alive until higher levels where specific traits and skills become available. This might make for a duo that spends more time than pleasant in downed state at low levels.

Engineer is one of my favorite classes in the game, capable of doing everything at once decently, or specializing into any role with a quick switch of gear and traits. It’s also the hardest class in the game to learn, and possibly hardest to master (elementalist is probably tied for this title). Slightly more forgiving and useful to a teammate than mesmer though, so out of the three it’d be my second choice. Same health/armor rating as ranger, lacks the pet to draw aggro but can cover that with a ton of knockdown/blind/block/etc skills.

Any two classes can work together, just read all the skills and traits to see how they can compliment each other. You can do it with anything, the most important things to do are:

1) Learn to dodge: save endurance for big attacks, windups usually have a 1-3 second “dust up” animation preceding large damage spikes that should be dodged. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dodge

2) Learn the downed state: you aren’t dead yet, kill something or have an ally revive you manually or with skills to “rally”. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Downed

3) Learn combos: many skills have either a “combo field” or “combo finisher” effect listed. Using finisher skills inside or through fields cause many effects, such as area healing, might buffs, weakening or stunning enemies, granting stealth and others. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo