Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, would you help me with this?

I have a playstyle in mind but I don’t know what class/weapon combination would fit.

I wanna be a melee damage dealer with a bit of survivability. I don’t need to be able to take 5 enemies down solo, but, being a melee, I need to survive head on battles. Ideally a good weapon combination would work like this:

1 – Melee DPS with a gap closer, a stun/knockback/etc and a decent AoE damage.

2 – Ranged DPS for support purposes, snaring enemies, putting conditions, etc.

I don’t need to be the highest DPS or the tougher to kill, that I can handle with my abilities :p

But yeah, that is kinda it… can you help me?

(That is pretty generic, but I can give more infos if needed =D)

By the sounds of it you’d like a Warrior.
1: Greatsword or Sword Shield.
2: Longbow.

I watched a couple videos… do you think a Ranger GS/Bow would be good?

I was going to say Sword/Shield + Longbow Warrior.

rsiloliveira.6429:

I watched a couple videos… do you think a Ranger GS/Bow would be good?

GS/Bow ranger is really a long-range dps dealer. You want to be far away from your enemy for most of the time.

According to your description, I would say a s/d or d/p thief, or meditation guardian fits that style more. Ham bow warrior also kinda fits.

rsiloliveira.6429:

I watched a couple videos… do you think a Ranger GS/Bow would be good?

I have fun playing my ranger that way. I usually roam with Long Bow, drawing mobs in then switch to GS and ponce. Sometimes I play melee using GS but LB can be used in close too, especially if there are a lot of mobs to be tagged with LB 5.

Hmmmm so Im guessing Ranger wont do. I would like to be mainly melee, and ranged just for support purposes or when I cant reach the target.

I think Guardian or Warrior would be my best options then.

Hey, just want to point out that here in the Helping section we often see new players, who may not understand all the GW2 lingo. Heck, I still have to work through some of it.

“According to your description, I would say a s/d or d/p thief, or meditation guardian fits that style more. Ham bow warrior also kinda fits.”

Does a newbie understand things like “s/d” or “d/p” or “ham bow”? Better to spell them out and/or link to builds?

The Ham Bow must be one of those legendaries, like the bow that shoots unicorns, right?

Which game mode will this build be used for? PvE, WvW or PvP?

You could make a melee (or close-mid range) focused Ranger no problem if that’s what you’re after.

Not enough information. Your description fits the following:

1. Staff/Scepter mainhand Elementalist with Lightning Hammer summon or Dagger mainhand Elementalist with Flame Axe summon.
2. Hammer or sword/mace|shield warrior with Longbow secondary.
3. Sword-pistol thief with Shortbow secondary.
4. Rifle engineer with bomb and tool kits.
5. Sword ranger with longbow secondary.
6. Dagger necromancer with scepter secondary.
7. Sword mainhand mesmer with greatsword secondary.

Guardians are the only class you cannot play this in as they have no viable ranged condition weapon.

All of these are survivable in melee using entirely different methods.

Hayashi.3416:

Not enough information. Your description fits the following:

1. Staff/Scepter mainhand Elementalist with Lightning Hammer summon or Dagger mainhand Elementalist with Flame Axe summon.
2. Hammer or sword/mace|shield warrior with Longbow secondary.
3. Sword-pistol thief with Shortbow secondary.
4. Rifle engineer with bomb and tool kits.
5. Sword ranger with longbow secondary.
6. Dagger necromancer with scepter secondary.
7. Sword mainhand mesmer with greatsword secondary.

Guardians are the only class you cannot play this in as they have no viable ranged condition weapon.

All of these are survivable in melee using entirely different methods.

Okay, let me see what else I can put out to help you help me. xD

I like the warrior archetype (no specificly the class) you know, big guy, heavy armor, big weapons. Maybe the secondary doesnt need to be a ranged weapon. But I like having a main thing and a support thing.

I dont really like the elusive type of DPS, like a rogue.

(Btw in this meantime Im trying some characters, I just post here while Im at work)

In that case consider Norn race for the archetype.

The Sw/Sh|Mace + Longbow would fit your idea the most. Swapping sword to axe increases DPS, but you lose one gap closer.

Guardians run with two melee sets – usually greatsword/hammer for this idea. Greatsword has greater burst damage, a condition clear, a leap and a pull, while hammer has greater AoE damage over time, constant Protection (-33% damage) to your party, an immobilise and a launch.

Depends on what you want to do though. Warriors would output more damage but offer less support than guardians. Thieves aren’t exactly ‘elusive’ all the time as well, as the SP thief generally does not use stealth in combat at all – and is the most capable tank in the game. It tanks using invulnerability frames, and dies if you screw up the timing – while drawing unstoppable aggro from most mobs. Warriors have a healing signet which attempts to outheal damage done to it, but they draw less aggro due to having less CCs and more HP, and are very vulnerable to Poison. Guardians reduce damage rather than trying to heal through it and use blinds to eliminate some instances of it, but draw even less aggro than warriors due to having lower DPS.

If you like having a “main thing” and a “support thing” you might want to rethink how you plan to play. You shouldn’t think of combat as camping one weapon set while you’re on offense and swapping to your second when on the defensive. Especially if your leaning towards Warrior you should be swapping weapons early and often in most cases. The last thing you want to be doing is stuck auto-attacking because 2-5 are on CD and your secondary weapon set is your “support thing” but you still want to keep the pressure on.

Check out the Hammer/Greatsword Warrior builds.

If ranged is a must have I’m pretty partial to Sword/Shield + Longbow. You shouldn’t however think of LB as a ranged weapon necessarily since it’s most effective at point blank range.

Yeah… I played ESO last year and got used to have a main weapon for DPS and a secondary for support.

I think in GW2 we use both weapons for all purposes, right?
To get the best use of the cooldowns and stuff.

It is hard to change your mind when you are already used to do something.

So the meta is to think of the weapon set as a whole, not one weapon do this and the other do that, right?

Well it’s not that that’s what the meta is, but that’s how you should probably try to approach it.

More important to care about:

1. What you like to do
2. What is the most effective way to do #1

Metas are designed to be the most effective way of getting random players of limited skill to work together in large numbers without any prior coordination. They are not designed to be the most optimal for every given role, not even the most effective in the limited role their are meant to achieve – and they update slowly, such that outdated builds that have already been nerfed into the ground 9 months ago are still being touted as meta.

If you’re doing roles not typically expected of the meta because of the content type you do, if your skill level is high enough to use very high risk-high reward styles or if you are able to coordinate with people before an event begins (for instance, to ensure that no more than 1 condition user will be present in a dungeon/fractal party), you will tend to end up using builds that deviate from the meta.

And even if what you want to do deviates greatly from the more efficient roles in the game, if you don’t have any fun doing it, using a max-viability build to do a role you don’t enjoy is a fast way to end up quitting entirely.

I remember there was some kind of training dummies. Where is that? At what level can I reach them?

I could easily just test everything and see what I like best.

There are a few. The PvP lobby has golems, which you can also use at any level, but not all stat combinations in PvE exist in PvP, and not all skills behave the same way in PvP as PvE.

The Silverwastes also contains some, which you can reach from the northwestern tip of the Brisban Wildlands. The area is technically level 80, but the dummies are in the eastern camp – so it does not matter even if your level is below. The problem though is that dummies are immune to conditions and immune to critical hits or critical effects, so the picture you get will not be accurate.

You could always test by soloing a champion instead in different builds – it’ll allow you to see your survivability after the effects of dodging and such, and timing it will allow you to see your effective DPS. The best for these are wurm type champions as they hit only moderate damage at melee range, and have middling HP – good enough for a test, not so absurdly high that it takes forever.

From “omg not a … again” to “yay, i love to play with …” in a group situation.

Can you put the classes in an order?

I know Necros are not very welcome in all groups.

Thx for the answers btw, I know they are pretty annoying =p

Personally speaking, there isn’t really a profession that I find to be inherently terrible in group situations. While it’s true that necromancers don’t really offer much in the way of party support, I’d still rather be in a party with a good necromancer who knows the class than with a guardian in full soldiers camping staff. It pretty much comes down to the individual skill of the player, and how well they know the game mechanics/encounters.

With that said, if you plan to go into dungeons, the typical class ranking is something along the lines of elementalist > guardian > warrior > engineer > thief > mesmer > ranger > necromancer, assuming everyone’s running decent builds and has some knowledge of the run. Since this also depends to some degree on personal preference and experience, I imagine the ranking will vary between individuals to some greater or lesser degree. Some professions are especially valuable for specific dungeons (like thief for Caudecus’ s Manor skips).

As for your build, I’d recommend either greatsword/longbow warrior or sword+dagger/shortbow thief. Both have fairly high survivability (warrior with its high base stats and mobility from greatsword, thief with its numerous evades and teleports) and good utility ranged weapons.

The way to approach a GS/Longbow or a Axe+Mace/Longbow warrior is not to think of one as main and the other as a support but rather that you’re switching between the two to either reposition yourself or to do something with the abilities.

For instance. You’re smashing your way in melee but you’ve take a few hits. So you switch to your longbow and drop the immobiliser on your target. Reposition yourself to let healing signet get you back up a bit. Pop off the burst skill to get yourself a fire field and drop longbow #3 to blast it for some might. you should be able to do all this within the cool down time frame of weapon swap. Switch back to your melee weapon and dive back into the fight.

Another example might be if you are running both banners of discipline and strength. You start by using your melee set to build up enough adrenalin to use the longbow burst skill then use longbow #3 and your banners to triple blast the fire field. Banner summons count as blasts. Then you pick up a banner and use skill 5 for another Blast, giving you 4 blasts off the fire field. This assumes of course you don’t have am Ele in the party who knows how to drop 25 stacks of might. In a pinch you could provide that sort of might stacking support.

In some fractals pug groups and we draw the Mai Trin fight, I’ve had to fall back on using an old armour set which runs trooper runes and switch around my traits so that I gain cleanses when using a warhorn as well as on shouts. In really desperately bad pugs I’ve even traited to get shout heals (yeh that much badness).

So after trying a lot of different stuff I finally decided to play a GS/Staff*Focus.

I like that Im pretty mobile with the Greatsword, with Whirling Wrath for a close combat AoE/Single target DPS. The area of retaliation and also that one that pulls enemies to you.

For the staff*focus I enjoyed the immobilize and the ground AoE of the staff with the healing/mitigation of the focus skills.

I don’t know how this is gonna work in the long run, with all the passives, traits, etc. But right now Im loving it.

What do you guys think of that combo?