Guild Wars 2

Hey there folks. So the wife and I are going to get into the game together and she’s pretty much sure she’ll be playing a Warrior. She has some experience with MMOs, mostly SWTOR and Vanguard back when that was a game. From what we’ve seen she enjoys getting into creatures faces, watching big numbers fly and having good survivability so she figured Warrior is a good match for her and I’m pretty sure I agree based upon the information I’ve seen.

For myself, I’ve a bit more experience having played just about every MMO out there at some point, although I’m definitely more casual than competitive. That said I can pretty much slide into any class or profession and be happy enough, just so long as it works great with the wife’s choice of Warrior. Anyone have any suggestions on that front? I’m pretty good at micro-managing and making quick decisions in combat, so I was thinking possibly a Necromancer, Elementalist, or Engineer? Anyone have any experience with such duos and whether or not they seemed to synergize well?

The last question involves potential specs for the wife and myself. Guild Wars 2 appears to have a lot of angles you can pursue for each class, anyone have any suggestions for the specs that would work best for the Warrior/?? combination?

Thanks for any information and experiences you’ve had.

Greetings Rozbeaux!

I would suggest the Elementalist simply because how it would compliment the majority of the Warrior’s abilities. Elementalists have an incredible range of support skills, mainly ground Area of Effects, and a Warrior (or other melee heavy class) can exploit these by using their ‘combo-finishers’ such as Leap.

As an Elementalist you could place a fire-type AoE whilst a warrior can leap through it gaining Fire Aura. Or, the Elementalist can place a water-type AoE and the warrior can slam into it creating a healing wave effect.

Elementalists also require some quick thinking as to adapt to constant changing scenarios. You have a choice of 4 Elemental types; Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Each Elemental ‘stance’ has 5 skills giving you a whopping 20 abilities (+5 utility skills) to play around with. As the flow of battle shifts, you’ll find that mastering the 4 elements will give you a massive advantage in combat, especially when being complimented by a Warrior’s combo finishers.

I fear that I cannot comment on Engineer nor Necromancer as I have not played these professions. Maybe you’ll receive some advice in further comments.

Happy Gaming!

Edit: As to your question about specs. It’s all about personal flavor in my opinion. Each tree has some tasty unlockables at every 10 points. Depending on how you play and what you find the most fun/useful, that’s when you’ll be able to decide which tree/build you would like to invest in. There is no (or at least shouldn’t be) ‘cookie-cutter’ build.

Honesty, If you are new to the game, you need to learn the basics cause this game doesn’t have tanks, dps, and healers.

This link will take you to the combat Guide you must check out.
It will teach you everything you need to know on how Combat mechanics and Traits/armor/weapons system functions.

Check it out:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/GW2-Combat-system-101-Guide/first

Also make sure you leave a comment on it so the thread gets bumped up so more new players can see it.

Hope this helps!

rozbeaux.8269:

Hey there folks. So the wife and I are going to get into the game together and she’s pretty much sure she’ll be playing a Warrior. (snip)

Anyone have any suggestions on that front? I’m pretty good at micro-managing and making quick decisions in combat, so I was thinking possibly a Necromancer, Elementalist, or Engineer? Anyone have any experience with such duos and whether or not they seemed to synergize well?

The last question involves potential specs for the wife and myself. Guild Wars 2 appears to have a lot of angles you can pursue for each class, anyone have any suggestions for the specs that would work best for the Warrior/?? combination?

My husband and I play together (and have in many different MMOs). One thing I love about GW2 – we don’t have to keep our “duo” characters together. We have yet to find any pair that didn’t work out for PVE. It’s best if we can complete a map that neither character has done anything in yet, so we both need to complete the hearts, but even that isn’t a really big deal. With the level scaling and the dynamic events, we’ve been able to run characters together and have both make some amount of progress regardless of what each character has completed, what level they are, or what class they are. The only issue is if you bring your higher levels into the 1-15 lands, you really have to hold back so you don’t one-shot everything.

There is a lot of flexibility in the way you can build a character, and every class is capable of doing DPS (ranged or melee), being tough, and supporting their allies. I would recommend you play a few levels of different classes before committing entirely to anything (spec or profession). It’s not hard at all to level in GW2, and you can always go into the heart of the mists (the PvP lobby) and try out all the skills at level 80. I’ve found that a lot of the complaining on the forums about this class or that class being useless stems mostly from not understanding the class. Some things about certain classes need fixing, but I have seen every single class in this game built/played impressively. Some builds aren’t really viable without some fixes (spirit ranger) but skill points are plentiful, and respecs are cheap, so just experiment and figure out what fits your play style.

I would check out the sticky at the top of this forum. My “things I wish I knew when I started” list includes don’t start crafting at low levels. You will not need to craft anything for yourself at low levels, and you can get 10 character levels by raising your crafting to max level. Now that I know, I save those levels until I’m in my 70s.

I took a look at the ‘things I wish I knew’ thread, very good info there. Mainly I see that switching out weapons causes you to gain different traits. That’s also some of the info or suggestions I’m interested in getting, since I’ve seen some posts like “Dagger/Dagger is amazing for Elementalist” or “Use Hammer/Shield for Warrior Survivability” etc.

I imagine her and I will stumble around with different abilities for a while once we get in (we’ll be going in tomorrow when the game goes on sale) but it’s just good to know if people have experience like “I felt way more effective as an Axe/Warhorn Warrior than a Hammer/Hammer Warrior” or something. By the by, I have no clue if the combinations I’ve mentioned are actually good, they’re just some of the ones I believe I’ve seen.

There are some popular builds that are pretty fool proof, but I’ve found that there are certain weapons that I just like better than others because of the skills that come along with them. A rifle warrior is built and plays very differently from a hammer/shield warrior, even though it’s the same class.

You can unlock all of the weapon skills for a profession before you leave the starting area by buying one of each type you can use from the weapon vendor (sword icon on your map). I tend to pick the weapon I have the most fun with, and build around that.

There is a viable build for every weapon for each profession. It may not be the uberest dungeon speed running/PvP pwnage build in the world, but you won’t really struggle with any of the PVE content if you put some thought into it.

As a duo that is experienced with other MMOs, I think you’ll find GW2 pretty easy on the surface. It’s digging into the details that keep it interesting after you’ve explored the world for a bit. Don’t get too caught up in knowing exactly what you want to do until you’re level 80.

Masterwork gear is very inexpensive and is good enough for most content, you can completely respec your traits for a few silver, and you can earn enough skill points to get every single utility skill and have points left over (My main has 150 unspent skill points – you continue to get skill points after you hit 80). It’s much more forgiving than the other MMOs we’ve played – you don’t have to level an alt to try something different.

Hubby and I play together. We have tried different combos of professions while leveling up. Some of it is also playing style and trying to compliment each other’s skills. Hubby is new to these type of games and is having a great time learning what all he can do. Definitely great fun doing this together!

Guardian.
Ele works too but isn’t as tide-turning as Guard (protection/aegis) when it comes to keeping a team alive.
Plus a Warrior with perma protection is an extreme killing machine.
Let alone all the 12 mights from staff 4.

I agree with Pandemoniac, I have great fun playing with my boyfriend with pretty much any of our characters. You’ll find ways to work well together whatever you end up playing, so my advice is just pick something you think looks cool!

Then as you both get used to the game you can work out combos between your abilities – warrior has lots of combo finishers I think, plus shouts and banners that can buff both of you if she wants to go that way (not that there’s anything wrong with just hitting things :P).

My wife and I play together a lot, and I also agree with Pandemoniac. Any pair works. Although you could try to go for a completely different playing style, in that case, elementalist has already been mentioned. Or if you want to confuse both your enemies and your wife, you could try a mesmer. If you want to melee with a different class, guardian might be an option.

But if she figures out what the Deep Strike trait does for a warrior between 20 and 60 then it might become a little boring to watch her whirl through her enemies while you have to work for your kills. :P

any pair can work well together though with a warrior being heavy on combo finishers and have very little fields i would suggest some class that have at least a decent amount of fields

Refer to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo to see what fields and finisher gives what effects and which classes have access to which fields (doesn’t list if they have more of the same fields, unless you click on the fields name to get to the type of fields specific page)

As others mentioned elemetalist have a lot of fields, memser too have quite a few as well, though not many types, the etheral field though which very few classes infact have access to at all, and if they do it onyl 1 or 2 where the mesmer is filled to the brim with them, if done correctly you can have a near 100% uptime of that field with mesmer. Now in PvE physical and while finisher in a ehteral aint the greates due to how slow mobs attack and thus you are lucky to get 2 procs before the confusion run out. Chaos armor from blast or leaps on the other hand are AMAZING, each time you are hit while having chaos armor on the enemy gets a random condition and you get a random defensive boon (protection, regeneration, swiftness), mesmer itself with a staff can use a skill to gain chaos armor as well for itself, with the added bonus of getting protection when you use that skill, unlike through the combo version but otherwise it works identical