Guild Wars 2

Ok, it’s the standard question but I had hoped to get the attention of you find people who so graciously answer these questions. As with many, I am back after about 6 months or so away and after looking through about 40 pages of the forums am still torn on my class choice.

I am one of those altaholics who have this issue, but for me I have learned that if I don’t pick one (or two at most) classes I get burnt out quickly with the starter areas and eventually stop playing.

I have it narrowed down to Ranger, Necromancer, Elementalist, or Thief, with a slight interest in Guardians. Being someone who mostly solos in PVE I have tried to use the search engine to look up older threads asking this but the engine here is someone limited so I turn to you. I know my top four choices were very poor soloers when I left (might have had some influence on me going) or were broken badly in other regards. There seems to be very conflicting opinions on how each class really stands now soloing and tagging mobs. Everyone admits Guardians are in a good place but since they are my last resort class I would love info on the other 4 if anyone has any insight.

How do these classes compare in survival, killing speed, enjoyment, and exploration? Thank you again for your time and help… it is greatly appreciated!

I’d probably say avoid Thief from my own experience. I tried one in beta and shortly after launch and had a terrible time trying to stay alive running around solo. Of course that could just be me being bad at bursty classes. Elementalist I’ve heard similar things about, but haven’t really tried it past level 10 in the last beta event.

The Necromancer was my first class to 80 and I rather enjoyed it. They have one of the highest functional health pools since Death Shroud almost doubles their health (only almost since it’s constantly ticking down while you’re in it) which is a boon when in a tight spot or just cliff jumping. You also have a variety of viable builds (I’ve seen a couple people on the necro forum saying we’ve got more than any other class, but idk) so if you get tired of your current playstyle you can always mix it up instead of making an alt. Personally I bounce between condition and minion master.

Ranger I can’t really say too much about. The “gotta catch ’em all” pet aspect is fun for roaming around and leveling pve. I had fun leveling it, but then again it was one of three alts I would play when I got tired of necro for a bit.

I have an 80 Thief and 80 Ele (and 80 mesmer), but only dabbled with Ranger and Necro.

I would disagree about the Thief. Survivability is quite high with a thief for soloing open world content. If you throw up D/D you can use the number 3 skill a few times to stack up several bleeds and then just melee it to kill it. You evade all attacks while using #3 skill. Using this I solo’d 5+ Ettins without getting hit quite easily.

Elementalist is very fun and I mained it after my Thief. In my opinion, it is much more versatile than a thief. You can switch up your play-style quite often, which makes it a very fun class to play and gets boring less quickly.

I know Mesmer was not on your list, but imo it should be. It has very good survivability with illusions tanking, and it can do a great amount of damage. With my mesmer I can solo much more difficult mobs than I can with my Thief/Ele.

Elementalists are great for exploration because they can have almost permanent swiftness. Thieves have a +speed signet which is also quite nice. Mesmers have only one swiftness spell on their focus, which gives you swiftness for 12 seconds every 25 seconds. Therefore I’d say Ele > Thief > Mesmer for exploration. I cannot speak to Necro/Ranger.

Here is my personal rating (based on opinion and experience):
Survival: Mesmer > Ranger > Thief > Necro > Ele
Killing Speed: Thief > Mesmer > Ele > Ranger > Necro
Enjoyment: Mesmer > Ele > Thief > Ranger > Necro
Exploration: Ele > Thief > Mesmer

I have a thief, elementalist, and necromancer at 80, and a ranger at 30, and I spend most of my time participating in open-world PvE content and running dungeons. I’ll just stick to my opinion on them in PvE.

Elementalist: My first 80 and my main, so I am a bit biased towards them. Their survivability comes from your active defenses (positioning, dodging, use of healing skills, use of summonable elementals via utilities) and are not build to absorb hits as you level (read: enemies will punch through you like paper). Killing stuff usually involves running around in a circle (circle strafing) and using many skills to both CC and damage your enemies, but killing speed depends more on your preferred weapon set, with Dagger/Dagger being the fastest single-target direct damage dealer and Staff being excellent at far range AoE. I find that I enjoy having to think on my feet and use my 25 skills (5×4 attunments + utilities) to do as well as I can, but that means I’m pressing a lot more buttons than some other classes. With the right spec you can enjoy perma-swiftness at a low level (and if you are lazy, you have a 25% speed signet), so you can run around a map very quickly. Build variety is a little lacking, but also, one trait distribution (at 80) can let you use whatever weapon set.

Necromancer: Excellent survivability (as noted by Wolfgang). Killing speed is dependent on your build, of which there are several (approximately) equally effective ones for open-world PvE, and is probably slower than a D/D ele but faster than a staff or scepter ele. While I don’t enjoy my necro as much as some of my friends like theirs, I understand that it is an enjoyable class and has interesting mechanics. You also have a 25% movement speed signet, so exploration is pretty fast, and you’ll have less troubles with challenging skill points than an ele just because you have more survivability (mes in Snowden Drifts, I’m looking at you!).

Ranger: Very strong for open world PvE. The right pet/weapon selection can get you oodles of survivability, or you can focus on more DPS. You have an excellent heal at your disposal, as well. Your weapons focus more on direct damage than either ele or necro, so you will take things down faster, but you will have to rely on traps or your pet for CC. I personally found ranger to be the most boring of all 4 mentioned classes (since you easily can get to 80 by pew-pewing things in the face with a bow while your bear holds them in place), but I know many fervent lovers of their ranger. Rangers have a lot of access to speed buffs through swiftness and their 25% movements speed signet, and their pet gives them an automatic facetank, so exploration on them is swift and relatively easy.

Thief: While I leveled my thief with a guardian for the most part, one of my guildmates is leveling up to 80 mostly solo and is loving it. Like elementalist, your survivability comes from your mobility and your use of stealth, blinds, and stuns to prevent damage from happening, but you have access to more direct DPS. You’ll take down most things faster than an ele or necro, but maybe not quite as fast as a ranger because you won’t have a pet to attract aggro. I’ve noticed that while on my ele and necro I can think of a use for every skill I have, with thief sometimes I find myself just spamming the same skill over and over again (but that’s because they can), so it’s a little different. As far as exploration goes, again, 25% movement speed signet means you move around faster, but your ability to use stealth means that the challenge of avoiding tough encounters to grab a POI or a skill point is trivialized.

I have 9 lv80. Lowest world completion on any of them is 41%. The people I play with span many timezones(one is 12 hours apart) so I tend to solo a lot. I also play on a EU server from the US so there tends to be less random people on the map as well. None of them really had much trouble soloing outside of maybe a couple of skill points. Some are certainly easier than others but there was never a case of “I can’t do ____ unless I am a _, _, _ or _”. Most of my characters are in the middle between tank and glass cannon.

Picking traits and utilities that matches each other AND your playstyle is also important. For example, if you prefer to stand around and trade blows with the enemy then you should probably take more defensive skills and traits. I also try to take traits that give me a bit of flexibility based on the other traits in the same slot. My Engineer usually has the burn on crit trait which is useless against destroyers and fire elementals but there is a bleed on crit trait in the same slot.

For my thief I have a Rampager set for general roaming around killing things and a Rabid set for slightly tougher encounters. Stealth can get you out of many sticky situations so if you find yourself in those very frequently it would be worth carrying one of the stealth skills. Tagging isn’t much of an issue with a Shortbow. Weapon sets are also important depending on how you fight. Dagger and Pistol are both single target so you should avoid aggroing too many things at once if you use those as your main hand weapons.

Whenever you die you should look at the reason for the death. Was it too many enemies? Try a multi-target weapon or ranged single weapon to pull fewer at a time. Overwhelmed by conditions? Check your weapon skills/utilities/heal/traits. Wiki can also be very useful finding out about condition removal skills/abilities you didn’t know you had!

For me, many of my deaths can be attributed to impatience. Trying to run through an areas instead of killing my way through. This is mostly the case if there are ranged enemies in the area. Especially ranged enemies that apply conditions.

As someone who has soloed multiple champions, solo completed Cursed Shore, and soloed a dungeon on an elementalist, I will tell you that they are not squishy at all when played right. The main thing to remember is that, unlike a guardian, you cannot stand still and eat hits.

As D/D, you must stay moving at all times- not just dodging, but circling the enemy as you attack and using your skills to slow down their movement or escape their attacks. Scepter, especially with focus, requires less movement, but you must be good at timing your blinds and shields to minimize incoming damage. Staff, though a primarily group-oriented weapon, requires you to get good at placing controls like chill and immobilize on enemies to keep them away.

The drawback, if you build all-out bunker, is that your base damage will take a hit and it will take you longer than a warrior, ranger, or thief to kill things. But nothing will kill you if you stay alert and play right.

As for enjoyment, it’s really a personal thing. It took me a long, long time to adjust to playing my alts after D/D ele- it’s a very fast and mobile class that requires quick reflexes, lots of practice, and lots of memorization. A steep learning curve, but worth it in my opinion.

I’ve played ranger, necro, and ele. I think for me the ranger was the easiest to solo through all levels. Necro and ele are doable but were not as easy for me to solo in all areas. However with another person along they are great too. I’ve taken the ranger and ele to level 80 and enjoyed them both at all levels.

All in all though it depends on what you enjoy playing.

I soloed a Ranger and Guardian both to 80.

Rangers were more fun at game launch than now. They have been hit hard with various nerfs and so-called ‘fixes’ that made things worse. They are still one of the most poorly balanced classes in the game, and Anet seems happy with this because they have done nothing over 7 months to improve the situation.

Having said that, they are still a fun class to solo, just not as effective they once were. You will lean a lot about tactics playing a ranger, Forget about bringing one into a dungeon, though …

A Guardian is great for solo PvE. Very effective class with some decent build options. It is a more forgiving class to play, but still requires skills. Probably one the best balanced classes in the game right now, and unlike most classes, they have managed to escape any serious nerfs. Also, Guardians are very good in dungeons for the group support they can provide.

The weak point with Guardians is ranged combat, they are terrible at this mainly because the scepter is crap. So, if you don’t like full-time melee combat, this class is not for you.

Thank you all for the wonderful information. It appears the community here is as wonderful and helpful as I had remembered.