Guild Wars 2

So I’ve owned Guild Wars 2 since it was in beta, but I never really got a chance to play it very much until now. Over the time I’ve managed to level most professions to 30, and others to level 20 at the least.

But I can’t decide which one to ‘main’. Help me out?

I’d like a class that has a lot of build choices. E.G, they’re able to build for condition damage, or for burst damage, or for support, etc etc. Lots of weapon choice and neat/interesting abilities is also something that would be nice.

Armor preferences: Either Heavy or Light armor. Medium armors are sort of ugly to me.

I also enjoy doing PvP and PvE an equal amount.

I also enjoy melee and ranged combat both equally.

Note: I DO NOT CARE AT ALL ABOUT WHAT IS ‘OVER POWERED’ AND WHAT IS NOT!
So please don’t say something like “Lul Warrior are OP > all. Go war”.

Really, my preference is always the iconic ‘mage’ class in video games. Magic rocks.
That would be elementalist in GW2, but… I hate stance dancing. I hate it. I don’t enjoy it at all. And honestly, I just find elementalists sort of boring for some odd reason.

Thief – Fun. I enjoyed thieves a lot, there’s not really anything I didn’t like about them other than the fact they aren’t a magic-theme class. That sort of bugs me a lot.

Guardian – Neat. I guess I’m neutral about them, I never really found much out about them. Nothing amazing, nothing bad. They do seem a little over-popularized, though.

Mesmer – Fun. I liked these a lot too. Although I felt like they sort of lacked build versatility. I always did a lot of research on the classes, and it seemed like the only real viable build for Mesmers was ‘Shatter-combo build’, which is probably the most boring thing to ever exist. It was also a little annoying how a lot of their utility skills seemed entirely directed towards PvP, and most were rarely useful in PvE. And of course, their lack of build versatility/half of the skills only being useful in PvP just eventually made the class become relatively boring.

Necromancer – Alright. Nice build versatility, interesting/fun utility skills and traits, lots of weapon choice. All good. Except for I despise death-themed things. It’s gross. :[
Of course, don’t go cross this off the ‘suggestions’ list just for that reason, though.

Engineer – Nope. Cool theme, but they are just stance-dancers again essentially. Dislike.

Warrior – Awesome. I can see why they are so popular. But no thanks, warriors are just not for me.

Ranger – Neat. They’re cool, but I really dislike micro-managing pets, or the whole pet reliance thing in general. I must prefer to have pets that are sort of disposable, or not pet at all.

Elementalist – Nope. for reasons I already said.

So what class do you suggest? Thanks if you read this.

From what I read your main choice got stuck between guardian and necromancer.

Well as “necro” already says it has to do with the undead/dead but the necromancer is the only condition canon that can be played like all different classes.

You can play a berserker necromancer, soldier necromancer, hybrid necromancer, condition necromancer, minion necromancer, life steal necromancer, death shroud necromancer.

Guardian is a bit different. As guardian you can play support or damage depending on when and which skills you use. Your trait can help yourself or your friends.

They’re both great classes and I have both chars. (Necro 80, warrior 31, Guardian 16, Ele 11, Thief 5)

But I have to say the necro seems to be the easiest to play. I play on hybrid if you wanna know. Meaning I last long and do some pretty damage though not much condition damage but I’ve never been such a big fan of condition damage.

The most I like about necromancer is that you can switch the way you play with only few clicks and there are so many different playing styles.

I really like the guardian too but not as much. He has lots of skills to protect but the attacks are pretty slow that’s why I chose Warrior over guardian (plus guardian has hardly any health compared to warrior or necromancer)

It’s sad that you don’t like “necro”-styled stuff. Like sucking blood and all that.
After I got my warrior on 80 I’m probably going to do the guardian.

Given your preferences, I would advise you to go for mesmer or necro.

Mesmers have a lot of builds that are viable, shatter simply has the higher burst amongst them. I don’t play one but hate to face one in PvP, so I’d say they have good advantages in that domain.

Necros can be a lot of fun too, I main one and am experimenting with yet the third viable, totally different build, I found. I have few experience in PvP, but the tanky necro was doing well in WvW.

Your suggestions are about what I expected.
Although I feel like I should have mentioned I like melee game-play and ranged game-play equally.

Mesmers seemed like they were really lacking in PvE. Almost all of their utility skills are sort of lackluster outside of Time Warp. Which made it extremely boring.

I do love necromancer themed abilities. Not as in the ‘death’ theme of things, theme as in they drain life, or summon minions if you choose to build them that way.

Can I get more Guardian opinions?

To be honest, I don’t really like playing my Guardian, but I might not have found the build that suits me yet. Full dps feels like it’s against its nature and full heal isn’t worth it. I guess a more tanky alternative might be better but I can’t stand using mace or staff too long.

Necromancers and mesmers could have that “sometimes melee sometimes ranged” that you are looking for where the guardian clearly lacks in the ranged part.

Guardians are one of the default classes that people suggest. They wear Heavy armor and accept having less Health than a Warrior in exchange for self-healing and lots of good condition removal options. The greatest flaw of Guardian is that their ranged combat options are horrible. Though the projectile speed of their Scepter was slightly buffed in the past, it is still considered to be a joke by much of the Guardian community.

If you play a Guardian, then you’ll likely have a melee weapon set and will either use the Staff or a 2nd melee weapon set. (My personal suggestion would be the Staff since it still gives you some ranged options and it has some nice utility aspects.) Dps focused builds will often use a Greatsword. I’ve also seen people running Sword/Torch for dps builds. Other builds seem to use either the Hammer or Mace/(Shield or Symbol).

Guardians can be melee beat sticks or tanky support specs. It’s a highly self-sufficent class and a really strong choice. Also since it doesn’t really on doing a lot of condition damage, it doesn’t get penalized when participating in dynamics events that have many people all attacking the same target. (Condition classes run into issues in those situations due to how condition damage stacks and duration stacks work. In the end, condition builds are competing to see who can actually damage the mob and the loser won’t be getting a lot of the damage credit. This can lead to them having issues with getting a Gold ranking for event participation. Although ArenaNet may have fixed this reward issue during the three month break that I took from GW2.)

My first 80 was an ele, then a ranger, then I did a mesmer, then thief, and then a guardian. Guardian definitely felt like easy mode. Still fun to play though! Mesmer is my main now, far and away my favorite character.

You’ll be effective almost no matter what you do really, so there’s something to be said for that. I never looked at builds on the forums, but that’s a personal preference. One thing I would do is take your characters to the heart of the mists, so that you can play around with traits and have all of the skills unlocked. That way you can test out some builds and see if it fits what you’re looking for. There’s training dummies and a bot for each class to spam your skills against too.

Personally, I do think mesmer is a good choice. I mainly run a condition build based on staff, which I like because I provide a lot of buffs to my party (our warriors like permanent fury!), and it lets me back out and see where I can support the party with utility skills. My other weapon set is two swords, which lets me get into melee range with some nice defensive options.

Also people will be your best friend forever when you portal them to the top of jumping puzzles :P