Guild Wars 2

Other than being good at WvW roaming (that’s more a thief job), Mesmer seems to be what you want.

They’re wanted and decent in PvE and FotM, and light armour looks good (in my opinion). They’re more complicated than a guardian , but I’d argue that a thief has a higher ceiling in terms of mastering. Thieves are really easy to pick up and play and do well with, but someone who knows the profession really well will do a lot better.

Not one of those professions really has all of your bases covered.

I’d say level and gear a thief for WvW and then level and gear a Mesmer for PvE.

Based on what you’re looking for, it’s really either the Mesmer or Thief. Guardian is out because their playstyle is more group oriented than any other class, is easier to master, and compared to the other two choices it’s pretty easy to see what an enemy guardian is bringing to the fight… you’ll usually see a lot of guardians (especially hammer guardians) in WvW zergs too, which reinforces my point that guardians are more group oriented.

Now, for mes and thief. Both classes rely on deception to win fights against other players, are harder to properly master (the mesmer is easier to pick up and learn because of the clones, whereas a thief relies entirely on stealth). From what I’ve seen, thieves are not in high demand in PvE and fractals (they can be a real boon in the dredge fractal, but many people avoid it like the plague, and for good reason too – it’s awful). Armor and aesthetics wise, light armor is more revealing than medium armor (assuming you’re not playing a charr or asura), but I won’t question your fashion sense, so in this regard it’s up to you. I recommend having a look at some armor galleries.

With that, I personally think you should pick a mesmer.

These are all really good points, thanks loads. I’m definitely going to give Mesmer more of a go.

I have one currently at level 28 and find it pretty weak and I feel like I can’t really do much, but I’ve heard they are very different at 80.

P.S. if there are classes which you feel cover all of these bases better than the classes which I have said, do please say.

28 you can do a lot. Learn to time your shatters, all of them.

Mesmer starts to get a lot more fun ~ 40. Then you can begin picking up the Master Traits. For example, Deceptive Evasion (Dueling X) will really help with survivability and clone generation.
As for Thief, they’re plenty squishy, but can also be a lot of fun. Even with 5(almost 6) level 80’s, I definitely use mine as a #2 character. (I won’t lie, the Mesmer’s #1.)

It seems like youre looking for a thief or mesmer.

I share the oppinion that, guardian is really obvious with what they do :/. Its a + for some, but for you apparrently it isn :P.

Now to the mesmer… A mesmer is a jack of all trades, but when you try making a balanced build, it will fail. Or not fail, but atleast not r opimal. You can specialise in pretty much anything with a mesmer, but the best builds specialise in several things at once. For example if you want a suppkrt/damage hybrid, it wont be 50/50, but instead 80/100.

Most of our skills have more than one purpose, take Chaos Storm for example.

• In a shatter build you will use it to creata an area your enemy cant enter (pvp), so its mainly used for defense.
• In a condition build youll place it on the enemy to do damage.
• In a support build youll place it on allies to give them every single boon in the game.

Mesmer has an incredible skill cap, due to going high damage/low defense in pvp. You have to use timed evades, teleport and mobility to survive.
Learning a simple damage rotation is simple, but its getting away with it that is he difficult part.

Build diversity… Many claim there is none, but did you know that:

• shatter builds can down low defense players in as low as 0.5 seconds.
• phantasm builds can pull of insane damage, and focus completely on defending while they let phantasma do everything.
• healing with cleric is nearly identical as eles/engi/guardian
• you dont have to sacrifice damage to gain amazing support and 100% projectile reflection uptime.
• condition builds can stack 5 torment stacks and burning for condition burst damage.

Over at the mesmer forums, we have a community guild in-game, where our goal is to create a friendly atmosphere, where everyone is always willing to help each other. So if youre sick of reading walls of text like this, feel free to join and chat with some people. (Representing all the time isnt required).

Thief has a very high skill cap as well. Its squishy, so you have to use alot of active defense to survive. But thats not my expertise. In fact… Im completely rubbish with thief. The auto attack does like 3500 damage on crit though :o.

Thanks for all the replies, I’m definitely giving Mesmer more of a go, and it really does seem like a great class, but levelling it is an absolute pain in the kitten ing kitten.

Also, another question… How should I go about getting started in WvW Roaming? I really want to try it but every time I do try, I get my kitten handed to me which is aggravating…

I’d say stick with a group as an uplevel. Mainly since you:

1. Are still learning the class
2. Don’t have all of your skills unlocked yet.

An uplevel can kill an 80, but it takes a good knowledge of your class. Past that, focus on Vit/Toughness EQ for a while, it’ll make you a bit harder to take down.
(Although, IIRC, Condition Damage upscales reasonably well … so Carrion builds are an option, if you’re Condi-specced.)

After playing around on Mesmer a lot, I don’t really think it’s the class for me.

I’m mainly thinking between Thief and Guardian now, as I tried out some more Guardian builds and I’m really enjoying it…

Why exactly do you have define a “main”? I play all 8 classes and while I have several favorites that I return to again and again, I don’t consider any of them my “main” character.

I highly recommend choosing a main and abandoning all other toons to standing at the end of jumping puzzles. It makes gearing up less painful.

Guardians are awesome and are a mainstay of PvE, PvP, and WvW. So you can’t go wrong there. Although, personally I don’t see much build diversity.

Just some tips about thief from someone who (for now) mains a thief; They are a pain in the BUTT to level in PvE because of their squishiness and lack of AoE. Things seem easy for the first few levels, but once mobs start getting more health and taking less damage, you’ll be dying a lot (if you’re as bad at timing dodges as I am, anyway :p ). Also our build diversity kinda sucks.

But once you make it through that, you have a very mobile and fun (yet challenging) profession that is slippery and unpredictable (if you don’t use an overused build, of course) and has few hard counters in dueling situations. I haven’t done any fractals, so sorry I can’t offer any input there.

Remember, this is just from my experience. Hope it helps!

TooBz.3065:

I highly recommend choosing a main and abandoning all other toons to standing at the end of jumping puzzles. It makes gearing up less painful.

Jeez, I’d shoot myself if I had to play the same character class day after day…. “Gearing Up”, while you are sub-level 80 is for suckers…there is no reason for gear better than greens (masterwork) while leveling. Hell, you can stick to NPC karma gear and save even more during level up.

My main is whatever class I am trying to get up to 80 at the time. (I have one of each class)

Look, you are in contrary with yourself right now. It’s plain simple – if you want a class which isn’t obvious for it’s gameplay, then you’ll have to work around, use your brain a bit. You said a few times that leveling a mesmer gives you a hard time, but during that, have you tried actually trying something else other than standing with you scepter, using weapon skills on cooldown and auto-attacking?
Never mind, since you already said you don’t think it’s the class for you, why are you even continuing to think about whether to go with a guardian or a thief? You’ve said plenty of times that you enjoy your guardian, just go with it. I tried ranger, warrior, elementalist, mesmer and an engineer. And I’ve got only the last 2. The others, I don’t like, not my thing, that’s all. Nothing more need be said.

I’ve tried every profession now and I still can’t decide…

I think it’s just that I don’t have anything I’m really into in Guild Wars at the moment, therefore I can’t decide…

I guess I’m going to need to find something.