Guild Wars 2

I started with a guardian, realized in this game that ranged is much better. Ranged as a Guardian is pathetic, and the support is meh until you get very good gear. Can’t do melee as well as other classes.
Figure I will play a Ranger. Now why do that? Figured they would be the king of ranged.
NOPE. Warriors outdamage you, and are immensely harder to kill. Have great support. Best melee in the game.
Don’t see a reason to play a ranger. Most of my pets only use *one*of their skills, and I can’t even keybind them all so I can use them when I need….
Ranger pets miss 50% of attacks on moving targets.
Don’t know what to play.

You’re being pessimistic to a degree which is difficult to justify. A lot of your observations are not accurate, or are exaggerated to the point of hyperbole. It’s possible you’re having difficulty choosing a profession because you’re too quick to dismiss these professions based on faulty or limited reasoning.

Guardian is the class with which I have the most experience. While I absolutely agree that Guardians lack ranged options, I don’t believe that ranged is categorically “much better” in this game than melee. Melee performs very well in most situations, and in many situations where Ranged is required, Guardians get by with their Scepter. Some situations, like Sieges in WvWvW, are definitely going to be tricky for a Guardian.

Secondly, I urge you to reconsider this idea that “support is meh until you get very good gear,” for two reasons:

1. There isn’t any such thing as ‘very good gear.’ There’s merely good gear. Exotic gear. It isn’t that much better than Rare gear and you certainly aren’t going to get any better at Support by stacking +Healing, or whatever else “very good gear” gets you. In fact, I’d argue that stacking support-only stats in your gear makes you an ineffective Guardian.

2. Support is very often baked in to all of your abilities. You don’t “support” by using heals all the time. Support is the aggregate effect of your tactics in battle and the timely use of all your skills including weapon swaps and utilities, contextualized by your choice in traits and magnified by your choice of gear.

Finally, Guardians can and do melee ‘as well’ as other classes, if not better in some cases. Guardians have fewer options in melee than Warriors. That much is for sure. Just like Warriors have fewer support options compared to Guardians. But Guardians are perfectly awesome in melee. I would gladly argue that we have hands down the best Sword setup in the entire game, and our Hammer setup is absolutely devestating with the right traits.

Now, I’m afraid I simply do not know Rangers as well as some of the experts you might find in our forums. But if your appraisal of Rangers is as fallacious as your opinion on Guardians, I urge you to take a closer, more rational look at what these professions offer.

Or, if you really want, just go Warrior. You have a lot of good things to say about them after all.

Quote: Warriors outdamage you, and are immensely harder to kill. Have great support. Best melee in the game.

You answered your own question.

Well the good thing, is you still have 6 other classes to try. What do you like to do?

I made an elementalist as my starting character. I like it, though to get much damage output you need to be able to click though all the different elements and self combo.

I hated Thieves in Pvp, so I made one to test out why I hated them- they are very easy to play, and kill things quickly. If you like high damage, pick a thief.

I tried a Guardian up to a few levels. It seems pretty good, a lot more powerful than an elementalist! Though it is a mostly melee type class, so you have to like that kind of play.

How do you like to play? That is what people need to know to guide you on class choice.

TransparentlyOpaque.1824:

Well the good thing, is you still have 6 other classes to try. What do you like to do?

I made an elementalist as my starting character. I like it, though to get much damage output you need to be able to click though all the different elements and self combo.

I hated Thieves in Pvp, so I made one to test out why I hated them- they are very easy to play, and kill things quickly. If you like high damage, pick a thief.

I tried a Guardian up to a few levels. It seems pretty good, a lot more powerful than an elementalist! Though it is a mostly melee type class, so you have to like that kind of play.

How do you like to play? That is what people need to know to guide you on class choice.

I really enjoy melee. It’s sad that this game appears to favor ranged over melee a bit more than other games. I like having okay sustained with very nice burst (no roundup).
I like ranged also, just not as much as melee. When I play ranged I prefer to play a magical class.

Melee does more damage than ranged, but it’s a little trickier to play, you have to pay attention to positioning and flanking a lot more … it’s a risk vs rewards kind of thing. I play a Thief and switch between the two all the time, sometimes just for fun, many times because some enemies are better taken out one way over the other. It isn’ just about knowing your strength, but your enemies weaknesses, too.

>> TransparentlyOpaque said: “I hated Thieves in Pvp, so I made one to test out why I hated them- they are very easy to play, and kill things quickly. If you like high damage, pick a thief.”<<

The thing about Thieves is they are a high burst damage, but very squishy class – staying mobile is very important because you can’t take much punishment. Thankfully, we’re built around being quick and getting in and out of danger fast, but there’s a lot of timing to playing a Thief in melee when you’re fighting 3-4 monsters at a time.

There is NO smash your head on the keyboard and win profession. All profession have some nacks to play it. I love the engineer a lot, but I really had to learn to dodge and keep on moving as well as knowing when to use wich kit.

So if you are looking for a professiosn that makes the game easy forget it. Also keep in mind that any profession is very capable on beating any profession else in PvP when 1v1. The only problem is that it comes to how good you are. Again it comes to your own quality off skill.

Do not get me wrong, I’m not saying you suck at playing GW2. I am saying that every professions takes time to learn and understand and instead of just concluding that the class is bad, find out what your doing wrong, do it right again and if you don’t like the playstyle needed to be succesfull then you can say for yourself that that class is not your thing.

I would say that this game favors movement not range or melee. If you learn to kite & gap-close, any class is effective. Ranged attacks seem easier to dodge than melee in PvP. Every melee profession has plenty of cripples & leaps to stay stuck to your target. Just like every range profession has slows & kiting skills to stay away.

Ranged is great up until you reach the level cap. At that point you’ll mostly be fighting risen. Waves and waves and waves of power sprinting risen. That’s when the benefits of a range character really diminish and the strengths of melee specialists shine. When most of your fights come down to having an enemy right in your face, having a strong melee character is something to appreciate.

And yeah, Warriors excel at everything. Only play something else if you actually want to make the game a little more difficult.